

The Emperor Justinian. 
I. Silver Disc in Petrograd. 2. Gold Medallion formerly in Paris. 



APOTHEOSIS 
AND AFTER LIFE 

Three Lectures on Certain Phases of 
Art and Religion in the Roman Empire 

MRS. ARTHUR STRONG, Litt.D., LL.D. 

FORMER STUDENT OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS ; 
LIFE FELLOW OF GIRTON COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; HONORARY 
MEMBER OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ATHENS AND 
OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA ; AND 
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ROME 




NEW YORK 

EPDUTTON ^ COMPANy 

PUBLISHERS 



Printed in Great Britain 

// 



'^ 



^ 



^;' 



V 



ERRATA 

p. vi, 1. lo. — The reliquary of Ugolino di Maestro Vieri at Orvieto 
holds not the fragments of the True Cross, but an even more unique 
relic, the Sanciissimo Corporale. 

P. 'J2)- — By some inadvertence Dryden's translation of Virgil, 
Aeneid, vi. 851-852 has been substituted for that of Lord Bowen, 
originally chosen by me as laying stress on the quality of mercy 
referred to in the text : 

These be thine arts, thy glories, the ways of peace to proclaim, 
Mercy to show to the fallen, . . . 

P. 242, 1, 2. — For teffiples read temper. 



ENVOI 
A CHRISTIAN MALLET 

Marechal des Logis au XX 11^"" Regiment de Dragons, IV^'"^ Escadron 
aux Armies, en campagne 

My dear Christian, — / always like to re7nember how we 
smuggled you, a French subject, into our British School in the 
guise of honorary assistant secretary. But from the first I pre- 
ferred to call you my adopted son, as by a premonition that we 
should be united always in a commo?i love of Rome, and this con- 
fidence of mine was ?iever betrayed, for Rome in her every aspect 
found you responsive. . . . Those were fruitful hours that we 
spent together in the Villa Giulia, trying to reconstruct some 
picture of the vanished civilisation of the Latin race ; or in the 

Vatican, where the masterpieces of Greek sculpture revealed to us 
the spell by which Greece held her grim conqueror captive ; or in 
the Baths of Diocletian, where we traced on the stelae of her 
Provinces the religious beliefs that helped Rome to establish her 
Imperial sway, and the soldiers of her legiotis to live and die 
faithful to her service. And always, whether among the ruins 
and relics of classics or of Mediaeval Rome, or in the churches and 
palaces of the Rome of Sixtus and Bernini, I was glad to balance 
the impetuous judgments of your youth against the measured con- 
clusions of scholarship. 

Other moods would take us to the Campagna, or to the city^s 
''enchanted gardens. '' Do you remember that Easter Eve on the 

Via Appia when a great red moon lay in a hollow of the Alban 
hills ? Or that sombre garden ofi the Esquiline, under ivhose 



vi APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

desolate paths lie the ruins of the Golden House built by the rest- 
less genius who was Nero ? Or the groves of the Villa Mattel 
and the seat under the old sarcophagus where S. Philip discorreva 
delle cose dell' anima with his disciples ? 

At times we went further afield — to Arezzo, where the master- 
piece of Piero della Pra?icesca, transfigured in the evening light, 
made us forget the humbler Arretine ware we had come to study ; 
to Orvieto, where by a special grace we saw high above the altar, 
like a vision of the Holy Grail vouchsafed to the Knights of old, 
the enamelled reliquary that holds the fragments of the True 
Cross. . . . 

Do you ever think of the little flat on the Monte Tarpeo, and 
of the view, perhaps the noblest in the world, which would at 
times be lifted by music beyond the conditions of time and space ? 
How poignantly these memories and impressions crowded upon us 
as we left Rome that June morning of last year ; yet how swiftly 
regrets yielded to the magic of the hour, as we were borne through 
the sunlit Campagna and the hill towns of Latium to the noonday 
rest at Benedictine Monte Cassino, whence you had written to me 
a year before ^ one could do great things here.' The beauty of the 
Italian afternoon mellowed as we passed from Latin to Greek 
lands, and reached the gracious hospitality of the villa embowered 
in the ilex groves of Posilippo. A few days more and white sails 
were bearing us over a summer sea from Sicilian to Ionian waters, 
to your first glimpse of Greece. . . . 

It was thus in memory of our Roman friendship that I first 
wished to dedicate to you this little book, and also because while 
I was endeavouring to convey to my audiences in America some- 
thing of what I conceived the spirit of Rome to mean to our modern 
world, you were putting into practice the Roman virtues of dis- 
cipline and endurance during the first months of your military 
service. Little did either of us guess that when I revised the 
lectures for publication it would be during weeks of alternating 
hopes and fears, relieved by trust in the alliance of your country 



ENVOI vii 

and of mine in the cause of liberty, lit up by the brave confidence 
of your letters which confirmed what we already knew in our 
hearts of the valour of yourself and your Dragoons. On that 
fateful night of July $ist you had ridden out of Reims with 
France^ s vanguard, a simple Cavalier (paene miles !) ; since then 
you have twice won your promotion. It is with affectionate pride, 
therefore, that I inscribe beneath your name the grade you have 
fust won by an act of great bravery on the battlefield. Once again 
have you proved yourself worthy to serve in one of the proudest 
regiments of France, 

Dragons que Rome eitt pris pour des legionnaires. 
* * * * 

The news of your fresh promotion to the grade of Lieutenant, 
and of your decision to pass into the Infantry for the sake of more 
continuous work in the trenches, comes as I correct this proof. 
But I like to think that you would wish me to retain the original 
superscription in remembrance of a sharply defined phase of your 
life. 

Feb. 27, 191 5. E. S. 



PREFACE 

During the fall of 1913 it was my high privilege, as 
lecturer on the Charles Eliot Norton foundation of 
the Archaeological Institute of America, to speak on 
the subject of the Roman Empire and of Roman art 
and religion before about twenty-five centres of the 
Institute, before the Universities of Wisconsin and 
Princeton, the Colleges of Brynmawr, Wellesley and 
Vassar, and in the Lecture Hall of the Metropolitan 
Museum of New York. These Lectures form the 
basis of the present book. To my audiences I would 
like to record my thanks for their cordial and en- 
couraging reception, and in a more personal manner 
I would thank the President of the Archaeological 
Institute, Professor Shipley of the Washington Uni- 
versity, St. Louis, and its indefatigable Secretary, Dr. 
Mitchell Carroll of Washington. I may add that my 
choice of subject was determined in the first instance 
by the belief that any discussion, however modest 
and restricted in compass, concerned with doctrines 
of Apotheosis and of the Soul's ultramundane destiny, 
would be welcomed by audiences, many of whom 
had listened the previous year to M. Cumont's 
lectures on Astrology and Religion, now embodied in 
the brilliant book that we all know. 

The lecture on the Apotheosis has developed by 



X APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

slow degrees out of a lecture on the influence of the 
Imperial figure on later decorative art, given before 
the Architectural Society of Oxford as far back as 
1908. In the same way, the lectures on the After 
Life are the expansion of some three pages on the tomb- 
stones of the Roman Provinces of Central Europe 
which appeared in the first number of the Journal of 
Roman Studies in connection with the Exhibition of 
the art of the Roman Provinces at the Baths of Dio- 
cletian in 191 1. In both cases the long prelude on 
the similar problems of Greek art seemed necessary 
in order to determine more closely than is usually 
the case in lecture-rooms and handbooks, the precise 
debt of Rome to Greece and the originality of her own 
contribution. In their present expanded form the 
lectures were repeated at Rome in the spring of this 
year before the students of our British School, which 
in part accounts for the delay in the publication of 
the book. 

The subjects of the two lectures, though akin, are 
approached from a somewhat different standpoint. 
In the first lecture I have tried to account for the 
centralised formula that appears in late Imperial 
reliefs by showing the role played by the cult of the 
Emperor in the formation of what appears to be a new 
type of composition. Primarily, therefore, this is a 
study of certain phases of antique design. The two 
lectures on the ' Symbolism of the After Life,' on the 
other hand, represent the attempt to disentangle the 
various strains of thought and belief, whether native 
or foreign, that went to the shaping of the magni- 



PREFACE xi 

ficent sepulchral imagery of the Empire. The lectures, 
which, as the Introductory Address shows, are speci- 
ally intended for students, are put forward much in 
the form in which they were delivered, so that I trust 
that their many deficiencies may be ascribed not to 
ignorance only, but to the want of space and oppor- 
tunity for a fuller treatment. In the notes, at least, 
I hope I have made up for certain unavoidable 
omissions from the text, and should like to add that 
the present book is only preparatory to another 
in which I project to exhibit on a more extended 
canvas the complicated and intercrossing influences 
which flowed into the art of Rome. 

Of the books dealing with Roman subjects which 
have appeared since the lectures were delivered in 
America, I should like to mention with special grati- 
tude Mr. Warde-Fowler's Roman Ideas of Deity. To 
it I owe, with much else, a clearer understanding of 
that monotheistic current in Roman religion which is, 
I believe, responsible for certain fundamental charac- 
teristics of Roman art which the cult of the Emperor 
later helped to bring to mature expression. 

Without the full complement of illustrations made 
possible in the lecture-room by the use of the lantern, 
the lectures may appear inconclusive, but I have done 
my best, with the liberal help of the publishers, to 
illustrate the monuments most essential to my 
theme ; for the rest I have endeavoured to give refer- 
ences to publications easily accessible, such as M. S. 
Reinach's Repertoire de Reliefs, which should be at 
every student's elbow. 



xii APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

I am only too well aware that I court publication 
at a moment when all our thoughts are diverted 
by present anxiety from studies of an academic 
nature, and not least from everything that touches 
antiquity. Yet a time of probation which has called 
forth Roman ideals of national life and personal 
conduct is, after all, one when an attempt to gauge 
some of the causes that moulded the aspirations of 
Rome may not prove useless or out of place. 

My thanks are due to His Excellency Don Ramon 
Pina y Millet, Spanish Ambassador to the Quirinal, 
for permission to photograph and reproduce here the 
large sarcophagus in the Palazzo Barberini repre- 
senting a scene of apotheosis ; to Mr. A. H. Smith 
for leave to illustrate several monuments in his 
Department, including the fine Flavian medallion- 
portrait recently acquired by the British Museum 
and still unpublished ; to the Commandant Emile 
Esperandieu, to Mr. O. M. Dalton and to Dr. E. 
Krueger for the loan of valuable photographs. 

I recall with gratitude the generous help given 
me by Mrs. Arundell Esdaile in getting the lectures 
into book shape ; by Miss C. Amy Hutton, who, on 
my departure from England to Rome, relieved me of 
all anxiety with regard to the illustrations ; and by 
Dr. Ashby, Director of the British School at Rome, 
in the correction of the proofs. 

EUGENIE STRONG. 

Rome, March 1915. 



CONTENTS 



ENVOI 

PREFACE 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . . . . 

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS . . . . 

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS: ROME AND THE 
PRESENT STATE OF ROMAN STUDIES 

LECTURE I : THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE IM- 
PERIAL FIGURE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON 
DESIGN 

LECTURE II : SYMBOLISM OF THE AFTER LIFE 
ON THE GRAVESTONES OF THE LATER 
ROMAN EMPIRE .... 

LECTURE III : THE AFTER LIFE {continued) 

NOTES 

ADDENDA . 

INDEX 



PAGE 
V 



30 



181 

280 
28s 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

,. I. The Emperor Justinian — i. Silver Disc in 

Petrograd. 2. Gold Medallion formerly in Paris Frontispiece 
"II. An Imperial Lady and her Children (Glass 

Medallion) — Brescia . . . To face page \ 

. III. An Imperial Proclamation and an Imperial 
Largesse — Arch of Constantine. Portrait of 
Diocletian — Spalato . . . . „ 34 - 

-IV. Maiestas Christi— Chartres . . . „ 36 

^V. I. Selene (Greek Vase in Berlin). 2. Sol (Greek 

Phalera in the British Museum) . . • » 38 

^VI, I. Gorgon from Temple in Corfu. 2. Sug- 
gested Reconstruction of Pediment of Temple . „ 40 
-VII. Apotheosis of Julius Caesar (Altar in the 

Vatican) . . . . . . „ 64 

-^III, Two Reliefs from Altar in the Vatican . „ 66 
^.IX. I. The Grand Cam^e de France. 2. Coins 

with Apotheosis of Sabina and of Faustina „ 70 
"X. The Abdication of Jupiter — Benevento . „ 86 

XI. Apotheosis of Marcus Aurelius — Vienna (from 

Ephesus) . . . . . . „ 90 

XII. I. The Emperor Honorius — Aosta. 2. The 
Christ between Romanus and Eudocia — 
Paris ........ 102 

XIII. I. Valens and Valentinian — Vienna. 2. Val- 

entinian with his Troops — Geneva . . „ 104 

XIV. I. An Imperial Triad (Theodosius and his 

Sons), Silver Disc in Madrid. 2. The Marriage 

of David, Silver Disc, Nikosia . . • „ 106 



xvi APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

-''^^ XV. 1. Sarcophagus of Haghia Triada (Detail) 
— Museum of Candia. 2. Two Scenes of 
Apotheosis : — {a) From the Chariot of 
Monteleone. {b) From the Sarcophagus of 
Haghia Triada .... To face page il'^ 

'^ XVI. I. Stele from Chrysapha — Berlin. 2. Greek 

Stele — Grottaferrata . . . . „ 130 

'XVII. I. Stele of Lyseas — Athens. 2. Stele of 

Archippos — Cook Coll., Richmond . . „ 132 

XVIII. Scene at a Tomb (Attic Lekythos)— Boston . ,,134 

XIX. Sarcophagus from Clazomenae (Detail) — 

British Museum . . . . • » 144 

' XX. Scene at a Tomb (Stele from Xanthos) — British 

Museum . . . . . • ?» 150 

'^ XXI. The Banquet of the Apotheosis — Con- 
stantinople . . . . . „ 156 
XXII. Recumbent Sepulchral Statue of a Boy 

— Rome (Terme) . . . . „ 172 

/ XXIII. Funeral of a Roman Military Official — 

Amiternum . . . . • „ 175 

/XXIV. I. Tombstone of a Centurion — Graz. 2. 

Tombstone of Flavian Period — British 

Museum . . . . . • » 184 

^ XXV. A Family Group— Museum of Arlon . . „ 196 

XXVI. Satyr and Maenad— Museum of Arlon . „ 200 

XXVII. Two Family Repasts— Museum of Arlon . ,,218 

.. XXVIII. 1. Selene (ReHef from Argos)— British Museum. 

2. Sepulchral Urn (Detail)— British Museum „ 220 

. XXIX. The Igel Monument near Treves . . „ 222 

XXX. Apotheosis of Heracles — Igel . . „ 224 

XXXI. Apotheosis of a Roman Emperor— British 

Museum . . . . . • ,, 226 

-'XXXII. Apotheosis on a Sarcophagus in the 

Palazzo Barberini . . . ... 228 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
ROME AND THE PRESENT STATE OF ROMAN STUDIES 

I. Modern Views and Controversies touching Roman ^^°^ 
Art. The Pan-Orientalists ... 2 

II. Criticism of the Pan-Oriental Theory. Attempted 

Estimate of Rome's Relation to the East . . 5 

III. Character of Roman Art — 

(a) In Pre- Augustan Times . . .10 

(1^) The Art of the Empire . . .13 

IV. Proposed Treatment of Subjects chosen to illus- 

trate Roman Imperial Art . . . .14 

V. Necessity for keeping in View the 'Contributing 

Factors ' of Roman Art , . . .17 

VI, Spirit in which our Studies should be approached. 

Some Pitfalls . . . . .19 

VII. The Present and the Future of Roman Studies . 26 



LECTURE I 

DIVVS AVGVSTVS : THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMPERIAL 
APOTHEOSIS ON ANTIQUE DESIGN 

I. The Problem . . . . . 30 

II. Centralised Composition in Roman, Mediaeval and 

Christian Art contrasted . . . -33 

III. Centralisation of Design in Greek Art — 

(a) From the earliest Period to the Pediments 

of Olympia . . .. -39 

(d) The Pediments of the Parthenon. Pedi- 

mental Composition in the Fourth Century 47 



xviii APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

PAGE 

{c) Character of Greek Religion responsible for 
the Character of Greek Art. Influence of 
a Pantheon . . . .49 

{(i) Weakness and Strength of Greek Design 
further illustrated from Panel Compositions 
and Friezes . . . -53 

IV. Tendencies of Greek Design in the Hellenistic 

Period ...... 56 

V. Hellenistic Art in Rome . . . .58 

VI. The Imperial Apotheosis and Deification as a Theme 

of Art ...... 60 

VII. The Monuments of the Apotheosis and kindred 

Works from Augustus to the End of the Julio- 
Claudian Dynasty — 
(a) The Imperial Idea in Augustan Art . . 65 

{b) The influence of Augustan Art upon Popular 

Imagination . . . '75 

{c) Characteristics of Roman Art favourable to 

Expression of the Imperial Idea . . 77 

{d) Principles of Roman Design in the Service of 

the Imperial Idea . . . -79 

VIII. Centralisation of Design from the Flavians to the 

Close of the Dynasty of the Severi . . 83 

IX. The Principate of Hadrian to the Severi . . 88 

X. The Period of Diocletian and Constantine. The 

Christ gradually usurps the Place of the Emperor 

as the Central Theme of Design . . .94 

XI. From Constantine to Justinian, Persistence of 

Imperial Figure as the Central Motive of Design. 

Summary . . . . . . 103 

LECTURE II 

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE AFTER LIFE ON 
LATE ROMAN TOMBSTONES 

I. The Subject . . . . .112 

II. The Origin of the Gravestone traced to Fear of the 

Ghost . . . . . .114 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS xix 

PAGE 

III. Origin of Sepulchral Imagery . . .121 

IV. Conceptions of the After Life on Mycenaean and 

Peloponnesian Stelae . . . . ia8 

V. The Attic Reaction. Character of Attic Sepulchral 
Imagery — 
(a) Traces of Beliefs in an After Life in certain 

Attic Stelae . . . .134 

(3) After Life Beliefs in Attic Vase Pictures . 137 
(c) General Trend of Attic Thought with regard 

to Death ..... 138 
VI. The Sepulchral Imagery of Asia Minor — 

(a) General Character . . . .142 

(^) Scenes of Apotheosis and After Life on 
Sarcophagi from Cyprus and from Clazo- 
menae. The Chariot of Monteleone . 144 

(c) Sepulchral Imagery of Lycia . . .148 

{d) Chios. The Sarcophagi of Sidon. Character 

of Ionian Art . . . • ^53 

VII. Graeco- Asiatic Stelae of the Hellenistic Period . 157 
VIII. Figured Tombstones in Greek Lands outside Asia 

Minor and Attica . . . . -159 

IX. The Sepulchral Art of the Romans from Primitive 
Times to the Augustan Era — 
(a) Prehistoric Rome and Latium . .162 

(^) From the early Fifth Century to the End of 

the Republic . . . .166 

{c) From the End of the Republic to Augustus . 1 70 



LECTURE III 

THE AFTER LIFE {continued) 

I. Symbolism of the Apotheosis of the Soul. The Eagle 

and the Wreath . . , . . 181 

II. Influence of Mithraism on Sepulchral Imagery — 

(a) The Mithraic Legend . . .187 

{b) Mithraic Symbols on Roman Tombstones . 191 

III. Orphic and Dionysiac Symbolism . . .197 



XX APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

PAGE 

IV. The Dioscuri, Heracles and Aeneas, as Emblems of 
the Wanderings and Triumph of the Soul. Death 
conceived as a Sacred Marriage. Retrospect . 201 
V. Excursus on the Imagery of Tombs in Rome . 205 

VI. Minor Symbolism of the Stelae. Scenes from Daily 

Life . . . . . .214 

VII. The Monument at Igel. Summary and Conclusion 222 



PLATE II. 




An Imperial Lady and her Children. 
Glass Medallion. Brescia. 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO 
STUDENTS 

ROME AND THE PRESENT STATE OF ROMAN 
STUDIES 

O Roma nobilis 
Orbis et domina 
Cunctarum urbium 
Excellentissima. 

Mediaeval Hyjnn. 

I WELCOME the opportunity of offering a few general 
remarks on the present state of Roman studies all the 
more gladly that when I come to the special subjects 
of the lectures I shall be able to unfold them, so to 
speak, against a prepared background, and you will 
be able to realise more easily perhaps than might 
otherwise be the case, the range of phenomena to 
which they belong. 

No modern development of Classical studies is, I 
think, more striking than the new sympathetic ap- 
preciation of the art of the Roman Empire, though 
the value placed upon this art varies, and its origi- 
nality has been most violently impugned. This 
newly awakened interest flows no doubt from a larger 
Imperialistic movement which turns to Rome once 
more as to the forerunner of its own aspirations. 

A 



2 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

What has happened is not so much a revival as a 
quickening of interest in ideals which never entirely 
died out. Though bereft of political power, Rome, 
as our mediaeval hymn reminds us, remained Orhis 
domina to the imagination of the Middle Ages. The 
Renaissance is heralded by Dante's vision of a re- 
formed Imperialism which should revive the old 
Roman and Stoic ideal of a city of men, with the 
Emperor to direct the human race to ' temporal 
felicity in accordance with the teaching of philosophy,' 
and Imperialism in one form or other has continued 
to fire the imagination of mankind and dominates our 
era with a new prestige. Year by year we see an in- 
crease in the number of books and lectures dealing 
with Roman ideas and their application to the pro- 
blem of Empire to-day. Archaeology and the history 
of art have naturally come in for their share of this 
revival, and while the scholar gains a fresh conception 
of ancient Rome from the monuments on which her 
history is hewn in imperishable shapes, the artist 
feels inspired by those same monuments to seek for 
new and enduring formulas, wherewith he may 
clothe the ideals of a modern world. 

I. Modern Views and Controversies touching 

Roman Art. The Pan-Orientalists 
To-day I propose first to attempt a brief survey of 
the stage reached by the burning controversy as to 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 3 

the origins of the art of Imperial Rome, and to follow 
up these remarks by touching, though perforce more 
briefly still, on the value which her past bestows upon 
modern Rome as a centre of study. I must begin by 
trying to define what is meant by Roman art. The 
task is not an easy one. In spite of the fact that the 
importance of the subject is now fully recognised, the 
difficulties which attend its study seem to increase 
rather than to lessen with every new discovery and 
every fresh point of view. Scholars now concede that 
the art produced under the Roman rule has a place 
in the long evolution of artistic form ; and that, in 
the centuries which followed the establishment of the 
Empire, accepted formulas were revivified by adap- 
tation to new political and religious ideals, and 
finally quickened into new and vigorous life by the 
spread of Christianity. Nevertheless deep-rooted 
superstition dies hard : 

The old dragon underground 

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. 

The prejudice against Roman art as inferior still lives, 
and, lurking even under the latest speculation, rears 
its head in a new and subtle form. The art of the 
Roman Empire is no longer dismissed as a last un- 
important chapter in the history of the decadent 
antique ; the endeavour is now to prove that this art 
was not Roman at all. If, to quote a sentence which 



4 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

has become proverbial, there was not only decadence 
in the ' three first centuries of the Empire but also 
progress along an ascending line,' a militant school 
led by Josef Strzygowski^ claims this progress as 
the effect of foreign influences and allows to Rome 
only the heritage of decadence. These look upon 
Greece as outworn in the time of the Empire, and 
upon Rome as sterile ; and trace back the new artistic 
forms corresponding to new spiritual needs to the 
Graeco-Oriental cities of Asia Minor or of Egypt, to 
Syria, to that Asiatic hinterland which looms so large 
in modern archaeological speculation. Moreover, the 
controversy has now assumed a double aspect. For 
the celebrated war-cry, ' Orient or Rome,' with which 
Strzygowski opened his campaign against the Roman 
school, he soon instituted that of * Orient or Byzan- 
tium ' in the attack which now extends to Rome's 
successor, Byzantium, whose position as a long ac- 
knowledged centre of artistic inspiration is likewise 
threatened. The Pan-Orientalists will not admit that 
any new ideas flowed from the New any more than 
from the Old Rome, or, as their leader puts it, * the 
accession of fresh ideals seems insignificant in com- 
parison with the fund of ideas received.' ^ These 
views receive the warm support of many important 
modern writers on the subject of Oriental religions. 
In the first chapter of his Religions Orientates dans 
le Paganisme Romain, Cumont, whose introductory 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 5 

remarks I shall venture to paraphrase, asserts that 
the Western peoples who have hitherto gloried in 
being the direct heirs of Imperial Rome must abandon 
their aristocratic pretensions, and learn to bow their 
heads before the once despised East, from which they 
derive so pre-eminent a share of their intellectual 
and artistic patrimony ; and he proceeds to picture 
the Orient as penetrating the West, not indeed, as 
used to be thought, through the fascination which an 
old and corrupt civilisation necessarily exerts over 
one less mature, but, on the contrary, in virtue of a 
renewed vigour which enabled the East to endow the 
failing Graeco- Roman peoples with new technical 
resources, with artistic skill and intelligence, and 
with the crowning gift of science. 

II. Criticism of the Pan-Oriental Theory. At- 
tempted Estimate of Rome's Relation to 
THE East 

While a leading part is thus assigned to the East 
in the formation of later Classical and early Christian 
art, Rome as a contributing factor is thrown back into 
the shade and sometimes left altogether out of count. 
In addition to this, a small minority — unimportant 
perhaps save for their violence — have tried of late to 
return to the old point of attack, by representing 
Rome as a brutalising influence in the development 



6 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

of the antique. Let us try to arrive at some saner 
view of our own. 

Old-fashioned archaeologists have been not unjustly 
reproached with adopting too easy a solution when 
they represented the growth of the antique by the 
direct line — Greek — Roman — Christian, yet it seems 
an equally artificial formula that represents Greece, 
with Rome tacked on to her as a negligible aftermath, 
as a concrete and self-contained episode slowly sub- 
merged by the vast wave of Oriental influence. Such 
phrases as ' Greece and Rome die smothered in the 
Orient's embrace ' are admirable catchwords, but 
they do not represent the infinitely complex factors 
that went to build up the art which flourished under 
the Roman Empire. On the other hand, the claim 
that an Imperial art originated at Rome under 
Augustus which spread its influence to the utmost 
confines of the antique world was equally exaggerated.^ 
We now see that the vast culture of the Roman 
Empire, emanating from nations in the most diverse 
stages of civilisation and of intellectual development, 
could not have radiated from one point only. It is 
more in keeping with the facts to say that Rome 
encouraged national development by her Imperial 
policy and then gathered into her service the diverse 
phases of art fostered by her regime. At the same 
time, in discussing Rome as distinct from the Empire 
we may still reasonably assert that she ranked from 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 7 

Augustus onwards as a centre of artistic activity by 
the side of Alexandria, of Antioch, of Seleucia herself ; 
that it is no more incorrect to speak of Roman than of 
Pergamene, Alexandrian, Antiochene or Seleucid art, 
though Rome was by no means the only centre of 
Roman Imperial art. It is true that when we have 
established a legitimate claim to speak of Roman art 
we have to acknowledge on historical evidence alone 
that the East must have played a major part in its 
formation. Artists and architects, craftsmen and 
workmen of every description flowed into the great 
capital from the Eastern provinces of the Empire, 
sometimes attracted by the building operations of 
successive Emperors, at others returning in the train 
of the conquerors. We hear that after the Mithri- 
datic wars and the reduction of Syria, Pompey brought 
gangs of Syrian workmen to carry out his building 
plans ; Augustus himself wished, it is said, to remodel 
Rome upon Alexandria ; Trajan entrusted his vast 
engineering and architectural operations to the Syrian 
ApoUodorus. Long before Trajan's reign, numerous 
Syrians must have drifted to Rome in consequence of 
the Flavian conquest of Palestine ; it is not yet 
known what influence went to shape the profoundly 
original genius of Rabirius, the architect of the Flavian 
Emperors, but it seems probable that Vespasian 
and Titus were inspired by some kingly residence 
seen in the East to plan the famous Domus Flavia of 



8 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

the Palatine. This Syrianising process recalls what 
happened in Europe at the time of the Crusades. 
Richard Coeur de Lion, for instance, found the model 
for his great fortress of Chateau Gaillard in the forti- 
fied strongholds of Syria, and the Crusades had an 
effect on the marvellous art of the thirteenth century 
analogous to that exerted by the East on the art of 
the Empire.^ Rome assimilated what she borrowed, 
and in spite of her debt to both Oriental and Hellenic 
models, her art, whether Imperial or Republican, 
developed on lines of its own, and is without exact 
parallel or counterpart in either Greece or the East. 
However mixed the parentage, the offspring grew up 
in a way of its own, and even rendered back with 
interest the forms taken over from older peoples. 
Miss Gertrude Bell, for instance, in the admirable 
chapter on the ' Genesis of the Early Mohammedan 
Palace ' in her book on Ukhaidir, writes as follows of 
the origin of vaulted construction : 

In the second half of the third century, vaults with 
similar characteristics appear under Hellenistic influence 
in central Italy, where, after the middle of the second 
century, they underwent a development to which the 
Hellenistic East can offer no parallel. At the end of the 
second century, while Latin builders threw their stone 
vaults securely over a span of 14" 50 metres, as in the 
Ponte di Cecco on the Via Salaria, and even of 1850 
metres, as in the Pons Milvius, the Greeks of Asia Minor 
did not venture to use a span wider than 7*10 metres, and 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 9 

confined themselves as a rule to vaults under 4 metres in 
span. It was now the part of the East to learn from Im- 
perial Rome.'* Western Asia took back its own creation 
from the hands of Roman builders in the vast proportions 
which the proficiency of the latter had given to it, and 
over the whole of the Roman Empire the monumental 
vault sprang into being. The earliest extant examples 
on Mesopotamian soil are the great vaults of the palace 
at Hatra.5 

This intelligent and lucid statement, contributed, 
moreover, by one who is an ardent disciple of Strzy- 
gowski, should go far to restore the lost equipoise 
between East and West as contributing factors in the 
formation of the architecture of the Empire. It is 
in striking contrast to the violent language in which 
a recent writer condemns the architectural effort of 
Rome.® Every one is welcome to his own opinion 
expressed in his own way, even if it lead him to ridicule 
the daring concrete vaulting of the Empire by com- 
paring it to the * lid of a saucepan ' ; but to do this 
while ignoring the sober and solid vaulting systems 
of the Republican period, which may still be seen in 
the arches of the Pons Milvius or the beautiful Ponte 
di Nona, is at once bad history and bad criticism, 
much as if we were to take the Pergamene marbles as 
the supreme and final expression of the Greek genius 
in art, without so much as a reference to the art of the 
Parthenon and of the age of Pericles. Again, is it 

* The italics are mine. 



10 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

necessary to exalt the undeniable perfection of Santa 
Sophia — as much, be it said in passing, a building 
of the Empire and of a Roman Emperor as any 
Augustan temple by the Tiber — by decrying the less 
mature architecture of the Roman Thermae ? Yet 
since Rivoira's researches few will deny that the 
masterly suspension of the dome of Santa Sophia 
above its pendentives was only rendered possible by 
the attempts made in this direction by Roman archi- 
tects in the Baths of Caracalla and of Diocletian. 
* Jamais le genie de Rome et celui de F Orient ne 
s'associerent dans un plus surprenant et plus har- 
monieux ensemble,' says the illustrious French archi- 
tect, Choisy, of Santa Sophia, and at that, I think, 
we can leave it {Histoire de V Architecture, ii. 51). 

III. Character of Roman Art 

{a) In Pre-Augustan Times 

In point of fact, Roman Imperial art is neither so 
individual nor yet so Graeco-Oriental in character as 
the extremists of either party would have us believe ; 
nor, again, is it merely Greek of the decadence, as the 
archaeologists of a generation now rapidly passing 
away were wont to teach ; but different strata meet 
and mingle in it, and to learn to distinguish between 
these is the true task of criticism. The term * An- 
tique ' embracing Greece and Rome as the main 
factors of one mighty artistic m^ovement, was after all 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS ii 

exact. The old error lay not in linking Rome to 
Greece, but in representing the Greek or Hellenistic 
element in Roman art as an accession of the Augustan, 
or of the late Republican period. On the contrary, 
Hellenistic art transplanted to Rome flourished anew 
in a soil long prepared to receive it, a fact which has 
been overlooked in all our histories, where, until 
lately, Augustan art followed directly upon Hellen- 
istic, with rarely so much as a glance at that of Re- 
publican Rome or ancient Latium which we are only 
beginning to understand and appreciate. 

This early Italic art, as it is convenient to call it, 
to a great extent derives from Greek, and more 
especially Ionian art, but it lacks many of the fasci- 
nating qualities of its models. At times it clings to 
tradition with an obstinacy almost Egyptian, at others 
it adopts Greek ideas with headlong enthusiasm. 
Beside the more finished and measured achievements 
of Greece, early art in Rome appears somewhat 
prosaic and pedestrian. It sinks on occasion to the 
provincial level ; it has the heavy earnestness, the 
sturdy conservatism of a community remote from the 
centres of intellectual activity and production, which 
the art of the Empire itself did not wholly shake off ; 
but it has also the sterling qualities of the provincial 
spirit, solidity, and that prudent reliance on tradition 
which by preserving primitive forms by the side of 
the innovations introduced from Greece, evolved in 



12 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

time such architectural masterpieces as the round 
temples — the temple of Vesta in the Forum, the temple 
of the Sibyl at Tivoli, the Pantheon itself — noble 
structures which, as has so often been indicated, 
can be traced back step by step through the cen- 
turies to the round huts of the Neolithic peoples of 
Italy. 

The art forms of Latium and Etruria gave way in 
part to those of Greece, and these in their turn to 
influences imported from the South or East, which 
Rome passed on again with her advancing legions to 
every nation that came within her Empire. But the 
old was never wholly swallowed up by the new ; it 
was the peculiar quality of Roman art as of Roman 
religion to be at the same time conservative and hos- 
pitable. Primitive customs and the most primitive 
of magical ceremonies were so strong even in the 
Rome of Ovid's day that they permeate his Graecised 
conceptions of religion and literature. We shall 
therefore not be surprised to find that the conservative 
Roman, when faced with the necessity of expressing 
the relation of the deified Emperor to his people — 
if I may illustrate my meaning from the subject of 
my first lecture — recurs for the central figure of the 
State to the primitive ' frontality ' which had never 
been altogether lost to Roman art even at its most 
Hellenising period. 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 13 

(b) The Art of the Empire 

The fate of Hellenism itself might have been very 
different had Roman surroundings, like those of 
Egypt, for instance, been uncongenial to its develop- 
ment. In discussing the relatively trivial achieve- 
ments of Ptolemaic art, Mr. Hogarth has admirably 
said : * Greek art came to Egypt to vivify, and stayed 
to die.' ' Precisely the reverse took place in Rome. 
Here Greek art neither decayed nor died, but stayed 
to live, and was itself vivified by contact with Roman 
ideals on the one hand, and on the other with the 
fresh influences which Rome herself, as we have seen, 
derived from the East. The chief phases of the new 
activity were the ages of Augustus and the Flavians, 
of Trajan and the Antonines. A period of com- 
parative sterility followed, due in great measure to 
political reasons and the absence of that incentive to 
production which comes with conquest and military 
glory. But a reaction for the better set in once more 
under Aurelian and Diocletian, induced by the vic- 
torious campaigns of these Emperors in the East. 
In this period the East began to play the leading 
part which in earlier days had been that of Greece ; 
the result was a first great outburst of activity under 
Diocletian, and its eventual outcome the splendid 
massive art of the fourth century, of which I shall have 
much to say to you in the lectures. From the begin- 



14 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

ning Rome stood to Greece, to Ionia, and the Nearer 
East as these in turn stood to Persia and Meso- 
potamia, until Rome became a World-Empire and 
could draw her own inspiration direct from the Orient. 
But that is no reason for denying that the various 
influences were refashioned in the service of Rome 
till they emerged, both in the city itself and in the 
provinces, as what may still be justly called Roman 
Imperial Art. 

IV. Proposed Treatment of Subjects chosen to 

ILLUSTRATE ROMAN IMPERIAL ArT 

In what follows, my endeavour is to show in two 
concrete instances how Greek and Oriental influences 
combined with certain Roman strains to express new 
ideals. One typical example is afforded, I think, by 
the slow transformation of the traditional schemes 
of antique design brought about by the necessity of 
giving prominence to the deified or quasi-deified figure 
of the Emperor, who had by slow degrees become the 
central theme of the religious art of the Empire. 
In the two lectures on the symbolism of the After 
Life on Greek and Roman tombstones I shall try to 
show how the religious ideas of Greece and Rome, 
quickened by the strong current of the Oriental 
religions which spread over the Empire, left in the 
carved stelae of the Roman provinces the vivid record 
of a new Faith. Western artistic formulas that seemed 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 15 

exhausted were revivified by the magic touch of the 
East ; and in the Western world a sepulchral imagery 
developed which in the purity of its ideals and in 
the strenuous expression of its faith in immortality 
surpasses everything that the earlier antique had 
attempted, and comes near to Christian icono- 
graphy. In both cases I shall devote considerable 
space to the Greek ideas involved, as inseparable 
from the later purely Roman phase into which 
they merged. 

My hope as a teacher of the subject of Classical 
Archaeology is that studies of this character may 
help to heal that schism between Greece and Rome 
which is instilled in their school-days even into those 
brought up in modern methods, and which does more 
than anything else to retard the progress of Classical 
studies by weakening and falsifying our scientific 
outlook on the past. At no time do we show ourselves 
less Greek in spirit than when we repudiate as un- 
wholesome that intellectual curiosity which was 
among the rarest and most distinctive qualities of 
the Greek mind, and shut ourselves up in satisfied 
contemplation of the formulas which we have erected 
into shibboleths. Greek studies have suffered no 
less than Roman from this attitude of mind. By 
setting up artificial barriers between what we imagine 
to be Greek on the one side and Roman on the other, 
we debar ourselves from observation of the infinitely 



i6 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

complex processes of development which unite the 
two. 

If I may permit myself a direct personal allusion, 
it is to beg of you, should you ever think of me or 
these lectures again, not to bring it up against me 
that I pleaded for Roman at the expense of Greek 
art. On the contrary, I have tried everywhere and 
always, in what teaching I have been privileged to 
give, to substitute for barren rhetorical contrasts 
between Greece and Rome, evidence — based on facts 
arranged as well as I knew how — of what Rome 
owed to Greece, for so far this debt seems to me 
very imperfectly ascertained or understood. In- 
deed at the present moment I am compiling a 
book — small in bulk, but covering a wide historical 
area — in which the debt of Rome to Greece is traced 
step by step. Do you suppose, that after long years 
spent in study among the incomparable collection 
of Greek masterpieces in our British Museum, I am 
blind to Rome's and the world's debt to Greece ? 
Above all, I realise Greece's infinitely clearer vision 
of beauty, though I cannot help thinking that this 
vision was attained by the sacrifice of certain things 
pertaining to the spiritual world, which the Romans, 
in spite of their more mediocre endowment as artists, 
as poets, as thinkers, yet came to realise and to 
express, partly in forms inherited from the Hellenic 
Orient, partly also in others surviving from a primitive 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 17 

stratum of religious art and religious belief. I like- 
wise claim that in the process the Romans touched 
at times the great heights of inspiration and achieve- 
ment, though they left it to Christianity to bring to 
a victorious issue in its mediaeval sculpture much for 
which Rome could only pave the way. 

V. Necessity for keeping in view the ' Contri- 
buting Factors ' of Roman Art 

One more point. From what I have said it might 
be thought that I propose to consider Rome as the 
unique centre of the artistic impulse of the Empire, 
Far from it ; I merely claim the right to call Roman 
any art form which seems to have been inspired or 
transformed or invested with new meaning by the 
ideas imposed by Rome — whether the subjects under 
discussion be the superb type of the Defensor Fidei, 
or of the Christian Maiestas — both of which are, I 
admit, of Egyptian origin^ — or the Apotheosis with 
its mixed Oriental and Hellenistic character. We 
can see clearly in art as elsewhere how much Rome 
gained by substituting for a narrow national ideal the 
higher ideal of Empire. Let me repeat here a little 
more fully what I have already indicated, namely, 
that Rome never showed a greater or more intelligent 
sense of her Imperial mission than in her encourage- 
ment of the national characteristics of the conquered 
races. It is here that the opponents of Roman art 

B 



i8 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

come unwittingly to our assistance with theories that 
are mutually destructive, for it is evident that if, as 
one school asserts, the art of Rome is entirely non- 
Roman, then Rome cannot have stamped out all 
artistic impulse in the people she governed in order 
brutally to impose her own formulas, as writers of 
another school would have us believe. Instead of 
crushing the different nationalities that came within 
the pale of her Empire by the artificial imposition 
of a Roman super-nationality, Rome encouraged 
and developed their national life, and thus bestowed 
upon them more permanent prosperity than could 
have otherwise been theirs.^ Her Imperial reward, 
as I hope I may be able to show you in the lectures, 
was that the artistic formulas of diverse peoples 
became devoted to the expression of the new Imperial 
idea. More than six years ago, I said of the much 
discussed Barberini ivory, that if this beautiful object 
really was of Egyptian origin, ' it only illustrated once 
more the compelling force of the Roman genius that 
could gather up into its service the art-forms of the 
different countries under its sway * {Roman Sculpture, 
p. 346) . I am more than ever convinced that this is 
the right point of view for looking at the artistic 
achievement of the Roman Empire, and that in this 
way the envenomed question * Orient or Rome,' 
instead of running to acrid controversy, may lead to 
illuminating results. 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 19 
VI. Spirit in which our Studies should be 

APPROACHED. SOME PiTFALLS 

Students of Rome certainly have nothing to gain 
by obscuring the truth as to the origins of her art 
or of the manifold forms which it could command. 
At this point you will perhaps allow me to say a few 
words as to the spirit in which I conceive our studies 
should be approached, and to warn you of certain 
pitfalls against which young students, especially, 
should ever be on their guard. First a word as to 
the fashion still prevalent in our Classical teaching of 
using the Romans as a foil to the Greeks. Perhaps 
in America you have never fallen a prey to this bad 
habit : it is certainly on the decrease on the Continent, 
but we English cling to it stoutly. Let me take an 
example from a book of great literary beauty which 
has done a great deal towards restoring to us a saner 
and juster appreciation of the Greek Genius. The 
author cannot rid himself of the habit of heightening 
the value of Greek endeavour by depreciating Roman 
effort in parallel directions ; his estimate of Greek 
literature is as admirable as everything which he says 
of the Greeks, but listen to what, by way of comparing 
the two literatures, he has to tell us of Rome's poetic 
achievements : 

The Romans took kindly to the literary pastoral and 
the literary epic, and the sham didactic poem ; they 



20 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

revelled in the undigested mythology of another race. 
They are imitative and second-hand, content to dispense 
with a direct experience of life and transmit into their 
own language the emotions and thoughts of others ; for 
the most part their fingers do not touch the pulse of life. 
Vergil's Pastorals and Georgics are charming ; his shep- 
herds are sham ones and keep no sheep, nor are any 
genuine labourers at work in his fields. Only Lucretius 
among Latin poets will show us the hard struggle of man 
with the earth. And if we only keep Vergil in selections, 
we shall have some difficulty in keeping Ovid at all.^*^ 

I confess that this airy way of treating Vergil 
pierces me to the heart, for though I have little time in 
which to improve classical attainments which were 
always meagre, I yet try to read through Vergil once 
every year, not only for the pure beauty of his poetry, 
best appreciated if we read it In his own country face 
to face with the landscapes that he loved, but because 
it is the poetry of one who also understood certain 
things of the spirit as none had quite done before, 
and only one or two have done since .^^ I also know 
all that Vergil means for the true understanding of 
Augustan art and of the whole Latin civilisation ; ^^ 
and as it is not often that archaeology comes to us in 
poetic garb,^^ the idea of keeping Vergil only in 
selections does not commend itself to me. You will 
see in the sequel that I am myself not over tender 
towards the ' undigested Greek mythology ' which 
went to spoil so much of the artistic endeavour of 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 21 

Rome, whether plastic or literary, by diverting it 
into paths alien to its spirit. But however much we 
may deplore the sinister effect which wholesale and 
uncritical imitation of Greece and adoption of Greek 
standards had upon the development of Roman art, 
and I admit more especially upon Latin poetry, at 
certain periods, that is again no reason for hurling an 
indiscriminating thunderbolt at all her poets, and 
including them in one catastrophic condemnation. 
The futility of contrasts was long ago brought out 
by Mr. J. W. Mackail in a fine sentence on the poetry 
of Homer and Vergil, which I often like to quote to 
students, it is so good a text to keep in view : 

No great work of art can be usefully judged by com- 
parison with any other great work of art. It may indeed 
be interesting and fertile to compare one with another, in 
order to seize more sharply and appreciate more vividly 
the special beauty of each. But to press comparison 
further, and to depreciate one because it has not what 
is a special quality of the other, is to lose sight of the 
function of criticism.^* 

In spite of all efforts to combat it, the determination 
to praise the Greek at the expense of the Roman 
persists. At the close of one of his American lectures, 
a distinguished Oxford scholar drew a comparison of 
the civilisation and character of Greece and Rome 
in which not only were the Greeks endowed with 
all the amiable virtues, but what is more important 



22 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

In the bid for popularity, with the endearing and 
sympathetic faults as well, while the Romans were 
presented as 'severe, strong, well-disciplined, trust- 
worthy, self-confident, self-righteous, unimaginative 
and harsh,' ^^ not all of them agreeable qualities making 
for pleasant intercourse, or again such as we fancied 
specially characteristic of the Scipios, or of Cicero, 
or of Augustus and Vergil and Catullus, but fairly 
true perhaps of the race as a whole. So far so good, 
but lest we should be left with one shred of sympathy 
for the poor Roman, we are further told that he was 
a * heavy feeder.' At what Roman is this shaft of 
ridicule levelled ? If the feasts of Lucullus have 
remained proverbial, what shall we say of Marcus 
Aurelius' praise of abstinence ? Or not to trespass 
beyond my own subject, do the harsh spare features 
of the portraits of Republican date or the intellectual 
and ascetic face of the Augustus from the Via Labi- 
cana suggest ' heavy feeding ' ? The Roman Em- 
perors are fairly well charged by now with every 
vice of which humanity is capable, but even with 
the help of the illuminating elogia affixed to their 
busts in our British Museum, I have failed to find 
the unromantic sin of gluttony attributed to any 
Emperor save Claudius, that perpetual butt of 
the irony of the historian, whether ancient or 
modem. 

' They knew,' we are further told of the Greeks by 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 23 

the same authority, ' what Rome as a whole did not 
know, the inward meaning and the reverse side of 
glory. They knew the bitterness of lost battles, the 
sting of the master's lash ; they knew self- judgment 
and self-contempt, amazement and despair.' I speak 
always with diffidence as a mere student of the monu- 
ments, but what of the Roman conception of defeat, 
as we see it depicted on the column of Trajan ? 
Where in earlier art do we find the pathos of failure 
and the psychology of despair drawn with such un- 
erring mastery, or the tenderness of the conqueror 
towards the conquered more nobly delineated ? 
I need only remind you of the incomparable scene 
where Trajan, courteous and merciful like the great 
commander that he was, receives the submission of 
the Dacians at the close of the first war ; or that other 
scene where he turns away with a noble gesture of 
aversion from the soldiers who present to him the 
heads of enemies as spoils ; or again, of the episode 
within the walls of Sarmizegetusa, when the conquered 
chiefs prefer poison to surrender. These * harsh ' 
Romans understood the quality of mercy, and re- 
membered the precept of their own poet whom a new 
generation can only tolerate in selections : 

haec tibi enint artes . . . parcere subiectis. 

Indeed it always seems to me that the artists who 
carved the Trajanic reliefs were inspired by that same 



24 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

sense of pity which Mr. J. W. Mackail justly observes 
is the ' central charm of Vergil,' and that, like the 
Augustan poet, they too could ' sound the depths 
of beauty and sorrow, of patience and magnanimity, 
of honour in life and hope beyond death.' As further 
examples let me also recall to you the old Dacian 
chief who turns away to hide his tears as he receives 
the body of his dead son, and those many scenes 
towards the close of the second war in which the 
prowess and the endurance of Decebalus are held up 
to admiration and respect. As much and sometimes 
more imaginative sympathy is needed to realise 
another's woe as to express one's own. 

Remember also the pathos of the later Roman 
portraiture, with its psychological insight, its tender 
handling of moral or physical defects. Look at 
certain Flavian and Antonine portraits ; at the 
' Aesop ' of the Villa Albani, or at the bust of the 
young Marcus Aurelius in the Capitol ; at the por- 
traits of the women of the Emesene dynasty ; at the 
wonderful head of an old and wrinkled woman in 
the Louvre, surmised to be the aged Helena, ' mother 
and grandmother of Emperors,' and then tell me if 
our hard and practical Romans had no sense of the 
lacrimae rerum. 

One more warning as to the habit of trotting out 
certain conventional epithets, resembling set leit 
Motivs, whenever the Romans or their achievements 



>[TRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 25 

are discussed. Roman art and architecture, for in- 
stance, invariably call forth the adjectives * practical ' 
or * unimaginative ' even from writers who otherwise 
are ardent apologists of Rome.^® Yet I maintain 
that no people whose formative instinct failed to rise 
beyond the ' practical ' could have created Roman 
architecture or imparted even to works of utility 
such as aqueducts, viaducts, bridges — the Pont du 
Gard and the bridge of Alcantara — the inspired 
character which brings them within the region of 
great art. We are told that * in the works of their 
hands and their brains they were not an imaginative 
people.' But the Pantheon with its astonishing 
dome, the Thermae of Caracalla and of Diocletian 
where vast halls are spanned in a manner that has 
moved to admiration every architect who knows 
his business from Michael Angelo to our own times, 
the Basilica Nova with its harmony of spaces and 
its aerial cofferings reflected as it were in the 
patterned marble of the pavement — are any of these, 
I ask you, conceivable as the work of a people who 
lacked the imaginative quality ? In archaeological 
studies as elsewhere, traditional tricks of thought 
and speech may result in warping the sanest judg- 
ment ; as students you should ever bear in mind the 
words of the Wisdom of Solomon, that crooked thoughts 
separate from God. 



26 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

VII. The Present and the Future of 
Roman Studies 

I am well aware that the views I have ventured to 
criticise survive only as traditional formulas bereft 
of all driving force, and are therefore bound to pass 
away. Already our histories of art give every year 
a larger share to Rome's contribution to the world, 
and our periodicals welcome articles on Roman sub- 
jects as eagerly as on Greek. The great publications 
on the art of the Roman provinces now undertaken 
by almost every modern country settled by the 
Roman legions ; the archaeological expeditions to 
various Roman sites such as the Romanised cities of 
Asia and the Syrian cities of the Antonine period ; 
the now recognised importance of the art of the 
Empire and its bearing on Christian art — all are signs 
of a great revival of interest in the Roman Empire 
and in Roman studies. Nor should we forget that 
for many years the nations of modern Europe, all of 
whom were more or less affected by the civilisation 
diffused by Rome and her armies, have been repre- 
sented in Rome as in a mother-city by Institutes of 
art and archaeology. After a period when their 
activity was for a time eclipsed by the attraction of 
archaeological discovery in Greek lands, these Insti- 
tutes have been strengthened and reorganised and, 
best omen of all, have attracted a fresh influx of 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 27 

students, whose presence shows that Rome is once 
more looked upon as the natural centre of these 
studies. If we are no longer to be allowed to call 
ourselves solely the heirs of Rome, it is, after all, 
because history and archaeology have shown us to 
be something greater still — the heirs, namely, of all 
the civilisations, whether Western or Eastern, that 
once came under her sway. And as a proof of the 
acknowledged vitality of the conceptions that ema- 
nated from Imperial Rome as factors in modern art, 
we should rejoice that two of the Institutes, the 
American and the British, have decided to amal- 
gamate with the bodies either existing or in process 
of formation, of practising members of the living arts. 
In this new alliance of art and archaeology, under the 
auspices of our British School and of the American 
Academy, I see the happiest presage for the future 
of the constructive and the plastic arts. You in 
America, with architectural triumphs such as the 
Pennsylvania and the Grand Central Railway Stations 
of New York, the Station of Chicago, the exquisitely 
planned * Hall of all the Americas ' at Washington, 
the mighty * sky-scrapers ' which have restored to 
modern cities the soaring dignity of the vertical line, 
do not need to be reminded of what the modem world 
can learn, and learn, too, in the way of application 
to modern life, from Roman architecture. Your 
architects have learnt to build round a central space, 



28 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

to construct piers that support aerial systems of 
roofing, to clothe walls in multi-coloured marble 
revetments, in a manner that would astonish Domi- 
tian's Rabirius and Trajan's Apollodorus, and that 
excellent architect, the Emperor Hadrian himself, 
and which would delight the unknown genius who 
planned the Basilica Nova. I am not here to speak 
to you of the ' Mistress Art,' nor, indeed, am I com- 
petent to do so, though I ask you to bear in mind 
what I have said of the imaginative quality of Roman 
architecture. There emanates from it that vital 
impulse of which Americans have not been slow to 
avail themselves. In this respect we English lag far 
behind, but if anything can help us to shake off the 
parochial character which is apt to mar our best 
modern efforts, we shall owe it, I think, to a renewed 
belief in the efficacy of study in Rome. The very 
fact that the art of the Roman Empire has a com- 
posite character, and that in order to understand it 
we must first grapple with the far-reaching problem 
of its origins, redoubles its interest and value, since 
we can learn from the manifold forms that went to its 
making as well as from the finished product. Our 
aesthetic outlook broadens with the archaeological. 
The long neglected art of the centuries which pre- 
ceded the great period of Justinian is slowly coming 
to its own. Already we do justice not to its 
architecture only but to the grand originality of its 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 29 

portraiture. The Tetrarchy of San Marco and the 
Valentinian of Barletta ; the Constantine of the 
BasiHca Nova and the * Theodora ' of Milan ; the 
Imperial group on a glass medallion at Brescia 
(plate ii.) * and the * Serena ' of Monza, are only a 
few of the masterpieces which have been rescued 
from oblivion or the handbooks of specialists for the 
delight of all lovers of art. 

You will not, I know, take it amiss if in conclusion 
I urge those of you who are artists to shake off once 
and for all the perverse notion that knowledge of the 
conditions under which works of art were produced 
in the past is harmful to the production of works of 
art in the present, or if I implore the archaeologists 
among you to abandon the methods of antiquarianism 
and to let their studies flow once more with the stream 
of life. Only so can artist and archaeologist alike 
draw from the past strength and inspiration for 
present effort and future achievement, and by their 
combined efforts raise art to greater heights than 
those attained even in Imperial Rome. 

* See note on p. 284. 



LECTURE I 

DIVVS AVGVSTVS 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMPERIAL APOTHEOSIS 
ON ANTIQUE DESIGN 

Human art does not impose problems of form through 
caprice or excess of virtuosity, it imposes them only when 
they are questions of life and death for the subjects to be 
treated : here also in the centre of all progress in art is the 
force of religious inspiration. — Della Seta. 

I. The Problem 

It is my purpose in this lecture to treat of the Im- 
perial Apotheosis as a factor in those highly cen- 
tralised compositions which differentiate the art of 
the Roman Empire in the fourth and succeeding 
centuries from anything that precedes it. None of 
the current formulas of Greek or Hellenistic art 
proved adequate to express the ideas attaching to 
the Apotheosis. The doctrine accordingly called 
forth a new artistic scheme in which the central 
motive of the deified Emperor was combined with the 
narrative element supplied by the representation of 
the Imperial deeds, the res gestae. The formula 
adopted for this central figure was simply a return 
to the old frontal principles of primitive art which 

30 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 31 

had been discarded in the great age of Greece ; the 
narrative element was that which, developed origi- 
nally by Greece, had become the common property 
of the Graeco- Roman world. 

Of recent years there has been much use and also 
much abuse of the terms ' frontal ' and ' frontality.' ^ 
In the present instance I shall restrict the words to 
their simplest meaning, and leave out of consideration, 
as foreign to my present purpose, any discussion of 
the aesthetic laws which attach to the frontal position. 
Thus I shall say of an image or statue that it is 
frontal, when it is placed squarely to the front, face 
to face with the spectator.^ This full-face pose, for 
which we have no entirely adequate English word, 
expresses the simplest relation that can be established 
between the image of the god and the suppliant, since 
this inaction effectually isolates the image for con- 
templation. In a stimulating essay on the effect of 
religious belief upon plastic form, Alessandro Delia 
Seta has recently shown that races content to consider 
the deity under the magical aspect of a power from 
whom they ask protection only, are apt to retain the 
primitive full-face, the frontal pose, as I shall call it, 
for their gods ; while the reflective and intellectual 
Greeks soon abandoned this isolated pose in order to 
link figures together in a common action and so 
created the mythological and narrative art which 
enabled them to illustrate the nature of the gods by 



32 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

representing their dealings with one another and 
with men, thus at the same time setting their cultus 
images free from the hieratic stiffness of the primitive 
frontahty.^ Delia Seta's book is at last before the 
English-speaking public, and it is needless further to 
summarise his views. In both this lecture and the 
next I shall have ample opportunity of indicating the 
greatness of my debt to what is certainly the most 
important work on the evolution and the function of 
art that has appeared of recent years. At the same 
time I continue to differ from Delia Seta as to the 
barren destinies of later Imperial art. He admits 
that * Rome had put the Emperor in the place of the 
gods, and near the image of the Emperor were reliefs 
commemorating his deeds ' {Religion and Art, p. 286), 
but he does not link this phenomenon with any subse- 
quent progress or with the art of early Christianity. 
I hold, on the contrary, that as the Maiestas of the 
deified Emperor gathered force it brought with it a 
centralisation of design that paved the way for the 
Maiestas of Christian art, and that the representation 
of the Imperial res gestae lead up to those of Christ 
and His Saints and the deeds of the chosen people. 
Frontality, the full-face pose, reintroduced into art 
that monolatric element which brings all the parts 
of a composition into the service of a central idea, 
and without which there can, I conceive, be no great 
religious compositions. Thus the subject of the 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 33 

Imperial Apotheosis can throw light not only on the 
later art of the Empire, but also on the perplexing 
period of the transition from Pagan to Christian art. 
The Emperor, the man exalted to the rank of god, comes 
by degrees to claim for himself the central place in 
design, to the exclusion of the gods who had been the 
constant theme of Graeco-Roman art. Then in his 
turn the Emperor is called upon to abdicate in favour 
of one greater than himself, and by the same slow 
degrees that he himself obtained it, he yields his place 
to the God made man. 

II. Centralised Composition in Roman, Medi- 
aeval AND Christian Art contrasted 

The problem which we have to examine will at 
once be clear if we illustrate it by concrete examples. 
First I would draw your attention to certain reliefs 
of early fourth century date on the arch of Constan- 
tine at Rome. According to investigations lately 
undertaken by Professor Frothingham, the arch may 
date as far back as the period of Domitian, after 
whose death it was doubtless desecrated and fell into 
neglect.* It seems to have been taken in hand by 
a succession of Emperors, and to have been repeatedly 
altered and redecorated, till under Constantine it 
assumed the shape under which we know it and was 
dedicated afresh. Owing to its association with 
the name of the first Christian Emperor, it has always 

c 



34 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

exerted a special fascination, and its architecture and 
sculptures are very familiar.^ 

In the centre of the attic is the proud inscription 
which records that Constantine liberated the State 
from its tyrant instinctu divinitatis, two words gener- 
ally accepted as containing a covert allusion to the 
introduction of Christianity. To either side are 
arranged eight oblong panels taken from an arch 
set up to commemorate the campaigns of Marcus 
Aurelius against the Germans and the Sarmatians 
{R.R., i. 241-8). Beneath again are eight medallions 
with hunting scenes, which, from their Flavian char- 
acter, may have belonged to the original decoration 
of the arch {R.R., i. 250-1). Below runs a little 
frieze which, from the style of the carving, cannot 
well be earlier than the beginning of the fourth 
century {R.R., i. 254-7). It commemorates on all 
four sides the res gestae of an Emperor, and probably 
refers to the Persian campaigns of Diocletian of the 
year 303, and the procession and other ceremonies 
of the Triumph.^ On the west side are depicted the 
siege of a city and a great battle scene, once supposed 
to be that of the Milvian Bridge ; on either side are 
scenes from the triumphal pomp ; while on the Eastern 
face, looking towards the Coliseum, run the two 
friezes that form the text of this lecture. On the 
one the Emperor is making to the assembled people 
a proclamation from the Rostra ; on the other he is 



PLATE HI. 






I. An Imperial Proclamation and ax Imperla.l Largesse. 

Arch of Constantine. 

2. Portrait of Diocletian. Spalato. 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 35 

seen enthroned while officials distribute to eager 
crowds the congiarium or largesse customary after a 
triumph (plate iii., i and 2). 

In almost every handbook and history of art these 
friezes, when mentioned at all, are dismissed as late 
and decadent work showing the complete debasement 
of art in the fourth century. This judgment has 
been repeated in one book after another, since, like 
Anatole France's shrewd professor, we all find it 
notoriously easier and more popular to repeat old 
ideas than to search for new ones. Yet I can imagine 
an unprejudiced observer looking at these reliefs, and 
failing to see why they should be dismissed as decadent 
antique. Surely the first thing that would strike him 
would be that their spirit is not antique at all. Where, 
in Greek or in Graeco-Roman art, do we find so highly 
centralised a composition, figures so consistently 
placed in a frontal position, or a similar principle of 
lighting, or flat planes thus combined with deep 
undercutting ? The deliberate optic effects aimed 
at by the Constantinian sculptor have been fully 
discussed by others, and I do not propose to touch 
upon the question here.' I want rather to draw your 
attention to the accent laid on the central figure of 
the Emperor, to the manner in which all the lines of 
the composition flow towards him, so concentrating 
the interest upon him that he becomes the centre of 
homage to the figures on each side, and is also offered 



36 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

in full frontal view to the homage of the spectator 
from without. It is this union of centrality or con- 
vergence, with frontality which distinguishes Roman 
from Greek composition in relief. 

The same principle makes itself felt, alongside of 
the older methods, in early Christian and mediaeval 
ivories, and finds supreme expression in the sculptures 
of our cathedrals — in the tympanum of Saint Trophime 
at Aries, for instance, or in the magnificent Royal 
porch at Chartres, to take two examples from the 
Romanesque and Gothic sculptures of the twelfth 
century.^ Let us examine for a moment the con- 
struction of the design in the Chartres tympanum 
(plate iv.). The subject, Christ worshipped by the 
symbols of the four Evangelists, is one familiarly 
employed in thirteenth century sculpture : within 
the almond-shaped nimbus or mandorla sits the 
Christ according to the scheme known as the Maiestas.^ 
On His left knee He holds the book of the Evangels, 
and He raises His right hand in the act of benediction. 
The figure faces the spectator in the hieratic frontal 
attitude, with no inclination to either side. The 
Evangelists adore Him, but the central figure is uncon* 
scious of the act which heightens and emphasises His 
own majesty ; for the Christ is thought of not in 
relation to the other figures within the tympanum, 
but is presented as God to the worshipper who looks 
up at the image. Consider for one moment what 



PLATE IV. 




(J 



< 5S 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 37 

would happen were the Christ drawn into the action 
of the surrounding scene. He would at once become 
an historical personage participating in a definite 
action ; whereas the artist's intention has been to 
remove Him, by means of the frontal pose, outside all 
conditions of time and space, and to present Him to 
us as the pre-existent Christ, the Son of God and of 
Man.io 

This method of emphasising the central by the 
frontal principle was not unknown, as we shall see, 
to the earliest periods of Greek art ; but from the 
first the Greeks exhibit a tendency to work away 
from the frontal pose, so that centralisation with 
them becomes rather a matter of arrangement of 
lines, untouched by higher spiritual considerations. 
Take, for instance, the masterly design of the 
' Nativity of Aphrodite ' represented on the principal 
face of the so-called Ludovisi Throne (Terme Museum • 
R.R., iii. 326, i-4=Helbig, 1286). Here, too, you 
have a strongly centralised composition : the straight 
slim young figure occupies the exact centre of the 
panel, and is raised by the two stooping attendant 
nymphs, who, for all their bending grace and tender- 
ness of movement, hold up the young goddess with 
the precision of heraldic supporters. So far as the 
body is concerned, the Aphrodite is placed in a 
purely frontal pose, which enhances the central note ; 
but look at the head. This is shown in profile, to a 



38 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

certain extent perhaps for technical reasons, since it 
is easier to draw the head in profile than en face, 
but the technical reasons are assuredly influenced by 
the Greek desire of arranging figures into self-con- 
tained and closely-knit groups. Observe the result ; 
instead of the central figure being, like the Christ on 
the tympanum of Chartres, removed by the frontal 
position beyond the conditions of time and space that 
govern the rest of the design, the profile turn of the 
head and its upward tilt in the direction of the nymph 
on the right connect the Aphrodite directly with the 
ministering figures on either side, and make her, from 
the passive object of their ministrations, into the 
active participant of their action and their emotion. 
There could be no greater contrast to the effect 
obtained by the frontal formula of late Roman and 
early Christian art, with its definite withdrawal of 
the central figure from the surrounding action. 

One more comparison, and this time between two 
objects of Greek art. One is the lovely cylix of early 
fifth century date in Berlin, representing Selene sink- 
ing with her horses into the ocean ; the other the 
bronze phalera from Elis in the British Museum, 
representing the rising Helios (plate v.). On the first 
of these the interlacing of the horses, the turn of their 
heads towards each other, the head of the goddess 
seen in profile above her body which is placed front- 
ally, all set this work in the class of narrative art, 



PLATE V. 





1. Selene. Greek Vase in Berlin. 

2. Sol. Greek Phalera in the British Museum. 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 39 

in spite of the fact that the design as a whole is seen 
from the front by the spectator. The phalera, on 
the other hand, with its great HeHos facing straight 
to the spectator, the horses galloping to either side 
that nothing may stand between the god and his 
worshipper, exhibits a purely frontal centralised 
design. The prophylactic virtue of the phalera 
doubtless kept the figure of the god in this primitive 
position, while the cylix, being purely decorative, 
retained the accidents, but not the essentials of 
primitive religious art. 

III. Centralisation of Design in Greek Art 

(a) From the Earliest Period to the Pediments of 
Olympia 

But in order to seize the different principles that 
govern composition in Greek and in later Roman 
art, it is not sufficient to compare monuments which 
might appear specially selected to support my own 
personal theory. To make the point clear it will be 
necessary further to prelude our subject by consider- 
ing a representative range of examples from archaic 
times down to the period when Greek artistic activity 
passed into the service of Rome. I shall draw my 
illustrations as far as possible from pedimental sculp- 
tures, since the triangular shape of the pediment calls 
for a highly centralised composition as clearly as 
does the tympanum of a church door. By the degree 



40 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

of the Greek sculptor's obedience to this demand 
shall we be able to gauge his sense of the problem 
involved. In the very earliest period the Greek 
obeys the frontal law as closely as other primitive 
peoples. You can at once appreciate this fact from 
the earliest Greek pedimental sculptures known, those, 
namely, which were discovered at Corfu in 1910 
(plate vi.) }^ They belong to a very archaic temple of 
which certain architectural fragments have likewise 
been recovered. The centre of the pediment is occu- 
pied by the powerful group of the Gorgon, flanked 
by her monstrous offspring, Pegasus and Chrysaor. 
All three are placed in full frontal view in their double 
capacity as protectors of the temple and averters of 
evil. This apotropaic function is heightened by the 
flanking lions whose heads are likewise turned vigo- 
rously to the front.^^ There could be no more direct 
illustration of the magical function of early art ; the 
power of the divinity is made visible, and through its 
concrete form becomes permanentlj^ effective. It is 
interesting to note that wherever a figure or group 
has a prophylactic function — is conceived, that is, as 
powerful to avert evil influences — it will be placed 
in a frontal pose even if in relief. It is thus that 
we can explain the strange and awe-inspiring frontal 
figures of the oldest temple at Selinos in Sicily ,^^ or 
the awkward combination of frontal head and torso 
with running legs placed in profile in the Nike of 



PLATE ri. 





1. Suggested Reconstruction of Pediment of Temple in Corfu. 

2. Gorgon from Temple in Corfu. 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 41 

Archermos ; ^* again, when it is desired to mark the 
divinity of one figure within a group, it will be 
emphasised by means of the frontal pose, as is the 
deified ancestor on the famous Laconian stele from 
Chrysapha in Berlin, which we shall have much to 
say about in another lecture. Let me point out that 
the design of the group from Corfu is centripetal, that 
is to say, the figures of the sides contribute to the 
support of the central image. This monolatric quality, 
which, under the influence of Athens and Athenian 
thought, was lost in what we call the great period of 
Greek art, is at the base of all centralised design. 
When the Greeks abandoned the centripetal construc- 
tion as on the pediments of Aegina and Olympia, we 
get that barrenness of design for which the most 
ardent admirers of Greek art have not been able to 
find an entirely satisfactory apology, and we shall see 
that the gradual disappearance of a monolatric prin- 
ciple deprived Greek sculpture of the factor essential 
to religious art, where everything should minister to 
a figure of supreme and central importance. 

We have so far only spoken of the central part of 
the pediment at Corfu. The figures of the wings, 
however, illustrate the tendency, prevalent from the 
first in Greek art, to throw off the tyranny of fron- 
tality. The subject is the struggle of the gods against 
the giants, and here an attempt is made to get rid 
of frontal poses and parallel lines so as to obtain 



42 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

groups in which the figures are interrelated in a 
common action. 

Frontality was never entirely abandoned at any 
period, but it was thrown into the background as a 
secondary motive in Greek art from the end of the 
sixth century onward, when the whole attention was 
directed to expressing relation in terms of mythology. 
But the principle was always there, as the minor arts 
attest. The frontal figure and pose were beloved not 
only in gold-work and in embroideries and textiles, 
but in much minor sculpture, a fact of which we can 
easily convince ourselves by looking through Reinach's 
Repertoire de Reliefs. In the major sculpture, how- 
ever, it was suppressed ; but it was beginning to 
emerge again in Hellenistic days, and it reasserted 
itself in the art of the Empire, strengthened and puri- 
fied by its obstinate though often obscure resistance 
to more fashionable methods. In this persistence 
and re-emergence lay the proof of its vital significance 
as a principle of artistic expression. 

A long interval separates the pedimental sculptures 
found at Corfu from those which come next in date.^^ 
In the early poros pediments from the archaic temples 
on the Acropolis of Athens there is little attempt at 
centralisation {R.R., i. 42, 1-4). In the ' Heracles 
and the Hydra ' or ' Heracles struggling with Triton,* 
while other serpent-bodied monsters are introduced 
as spectators of the conflict,^® the artist, in order to 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 43 

satisfy the exigencies of the central space, is content 
to make the monster rear his head and fore-parts at 
this point, or else places here the attacking figure of 
Heracles. In these instances, at least, the centralised 
composition is abandoned in favour of the narrative 
method, and there is no such harmonious subordi- 
nation of the figures of the sides to a central motive 
as in the Corfu pediment. Equally unsatisfactory 
as meeting the requirements of a centralised com- 
position is the design from the small pediment of the 
Cnidians at Delphi {R.R., i. 135, i).^' The subject 
selected is appropriately enough the contest of Apollo 
and Heracles for the sacred tripod. Apollo, on the 
left, assisted by a goddess (Leto or Artemis ?) who 
stands immediately behind him, pulls at one of the 
legs of the tripod to which Heracles, on the right, 
clings stoutly, while Athena, in the centre, is present 
to aid her favourite hero. The scene is conceived as 
a pursuit rather than a contest, the movement run- 
ning in a straight line from left to right. Furtwangler, 
in commenting upon the composition, rightly remarked 
that it resembled a piece cut out of a frieze rather 
than a pedimental group. The backward turn of 
the head of Heracles towards his pursuing enemy, 
and the heightening of the figure of Athena to fill 
the pediment at the apex, are the sole concessions to 
the demand for a central note. The pose of Athena 
tends to be frontal, without providing a true centre ; 



44 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

for the sculptor, with a more genuine feehng for 
narrative than for decorative art, avoids giving to the 
figure the definite aspect which should tend to isolate 
it from the rest of the personages of the action. 

These early sculptors were satisfied with making 
the figures increase in size towards the middle, but 
as time went on the childish device was abandoned 
for a definite central figure, as on our next example 
from the pediments of the temple of Aphaia at Aegina. 
Let us consider their composition as revealed by the 
recent examination of the figures and of the traces 
for their attachment on the floor of the pediments.^^ 
The subject of both pediments is a combat between 
Greeks and Trojans, the combatants being arranged 
in two groups of three at either side, with the solitary 
figure of Athena in the centre. In the western pedi- 
ment her attitude is rigid, almost frontal, her feet 
alone being placed in profile to the right, but the 
movement of her body does not follow that of the 
action within the pediment ; on the contrary, she 
appears to move forward towards the spectator. At 
first sight one might think, ' If this is not centralisa- 
tion, what is ? ' But if you look closely at the struc- 
ture of the design you will find that it breaks up on 
each side into isolated groups which, in spite of the 
balanced symmetry of their parts, are without organic 
relation either to one another or to the figure of the 
goddess. The old idea, based on our modern point 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 45 

of view, that Athena is controlHng the action, that 
she is present to favour the Greeks as against the 
Trojans, and that the battle is waged, so to speak, in 
her honour, was well enough so long as archaeologists 
could shuffle the Munich figures about to suit their 
preconceived notions of the composition, but it must 
be abandoned in the light of recent investigations 
which have definitely shown that the action moves 
away from the centre and has no relation to the 
goddess. Athena here is not present as god of hosts, 
she is at most an impassive symbol of battle, and her 
image, while marking the central architectonic space, 
is so little required by the meaning of the composition 
that it might be left out and replaced by some other 
figure or object without injury to the sense of the 
groups as a whole. Although Athena has the frontal 
pose of a cultus image, the fact that the actors are 
unaffected by her presence leaves the spectator in 
doubt as to the meaning she is intended to convey, 
and the centrifugal design of the wings effectively 
neutralises the monolatric formula which the central 
image seems to claim. On the east pediment, the 
sculptor, whether the same or another, dissatisfied 
with the cold mechanical effect of the central western 
group, attempts to make the goddess participate in 
the general movement of the fray by stretching out 
her aegis ; but as her gesture is without effect on the 
action, it remains unconvincing and a little trivial. 



46 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

Although Greek sculptors for a time recognised that 
the centre of the pediment required a dominant 
motive, they were powerless, in spite of their mastery 
of line, to invest this central figure with an emotional 
idea, a spiritual meaning, that should flow from it 
through the whole composition, knitting the various 
groups and figures to one another and to itself ; and 
so it is that in spite of the great beauty and the noble 
movement of figures and groups, the composition as 
a whole is not only poor and ineffective, but violates 
the main laws of pedimental decoration. The same 
defects and the same attempts at compromise which 
we note at Aegina recur in the pedimental sculpture 
from a temple of Apollo at Eretria (in the Museum of 
Chalcis), where Theseus, as he ravishes his Amazon, 
runs rapidly away from the centre and from his pro- 
tectress Athena. ^^ In both pediments of the temple 
of Zeus at Olympia, the central figures, Zeus on the 
eastern, Apollo on the western pediment, are no 
integral part of the composition ; they neither join 
in the action with the other personages of the scene, 
nor are they isolated as objects of reverence and 
worship. There is, however, a marked difference in 
the two pediments at Olympia. The Eastern, with 
its dull mechanical arrangement of the figures on 
the principle of a clock on the mantlepiece between 
two candlesticks, falls short even of the Aeginetan 
compositions ; on the other hand, the solidly con- 



DIWS AVGVSTVS 47 

structed groups so splendidly massed on either side 
of the Apollo, in spite of their centrifugal movement, 
bring the Western pediment, to my mind, nearer to 
the great compositions of early Christian art than 
anything else accomplished by Greek sculpture.^** 

(6) The Pediments of the Parthenon. Pedimental 
Composition in the Fourth Century 

So slight was the intellectual hold of the central 
figure upon the artistic imagination of the Greeks 
that the scheme was abandoned by the sculptors of 
the great period. When we come to the pediments of 
the Parthenon, we find that the supreme genius who 
carved their figures, whether Pheidias or another, 
when brought face to face with the pedimental 
problem, solved it, at any rate on the west side, of 
which alone we can speak with certainty, by abandon- 
ing the central scheme altogether, and by imparting 
to the composition a centrifugal rather than a centri- 
petal principle. No figure marks the dividing vertical 
line ; its place is taken by the group of the two com- 
batants, each of whom starts back from the centre in 
a diagonal line. The subject is the contest of Athena 
and Poseidon for the land of Attica, and we know 
that Athena was destined to be the victor ; but there 
is nothing to indicate this in the design, in which the 
artist accepts the scene of the contest as a whole, 
and substitutes for a dominant central motive the 



48 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

moment when the divinities move asunder to disclose 
their gifts. In other words, we might say that 
Pheidias took as basis of his composition the same 
centrifugal scheme that appears at Aegina or Olympia, 
but omitted the disturbing central figure, for which 
he substitutes, in order to fill up the space, the minor 
motive of the olive tree. By what we may call the 
principle of the divided centre the Pheidian school 
attains to that unity of composition which preceding 
artists, in their effort to combine opposite motives, had 
altogether missed. Carrey's drawing has preserved 
for us the main lines of the Western pedimental 
scheme, and since the torsos of Athena and Poseidon 
have been placed in position in the British Museum we 
can form a very good idea of the effect of the design. 
On the Eastern side, where the Nativity of Athena 
was represented, the attempt was also made, to 
judge from the marks on the floor of the pediment, 
to establish the principle of the divided centre. But 
the nature of the subject, which imposed an inert or 
inactive position for the Zeus, must have resulted in 
a less pleasing and well-balanced arrangement.^^ 

After the Parthenon, and in the hands of lesser 
men than Pheidias, pedimental composition, which 
his genius had momentarily raised to a higher 
power, seems again to have declined. The state- 
ment must, however, be made with caution, since 
the pediments attributed to Scopas, Praxiteles, 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 49 

and other great masters of the fourth century are 
unknown. But there are a sufficient number of lesser 
pedimental sculptures preserved from stelae and 
sarcophagi to show that the demand for a dominant 
central motive was once more satisfied by devices akin 
to those of archaic art. This appears from the pedi- 
ments of later sepulchral stelae or from those of the 
' sarcophagus of Alexander ' at Constantinople, where 
in the battle episode of the one side a Greek is made 
to tower high above his fallen foe in order to fill the 
space, while on the other side the figure of a horseman 
on his rearing horse fills the pediment up to its apex. 
In this case again we might say, as of the Cnidian 
group, that this is a piece cut out of a frieze rather 
than a pedimental composition. 

(c) Character of Greek Religion responsible for the 
Character of Greek Art. Influence of a Pantheon 

If we stop for a moment to consider this lack of 
true centralisation in Greek design, remembering at 
the same time that Pheidias gave the problem a 
solution which was quite the opposite of what the 
space of a pediment seems to demand, we shall, I 
think, find the reason in the character of Greek 
religion. The highest ideals of every national art 
have always gathered round the national conception 
of the Deity ; if Greek art never discovered a strong 
central formula, it was because such a formula was 

D 



50 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

not called forth by some dominating conception such 
as that which inspired the strongly centralised com- 
positions of Christian art. The feeling had been 
there in the magical art of primitive Greece in the 
pediment at Corfu, the metope of Selinus, but 
instead of being purified and developed by some 
central religious ideal, it was stifled by the claims of 
the Olympian religion. Had any one of the Olympian 
gods made a supreme claim to the adoration and 
devotion of man, his figure would have imposed upon 
art a type expressive of that claim, and all art, even 
when not directly in the service of religion, would 
have been inspired by that type. But Greek art was 
without a central theme to unify and concentrate 
the artistic impulse ; it was in the service of many 
masters, dedicated to a religion with many gods, 
with an anthropomorphic Pantheon where none 
reigned supreme, and it therefore lacks the theurgic 
quality that is so vital an element both in Mediaeval 
Art and in the art of the early Renaissance. 

Much has been said of late years in scorn of the 
Olympians, and concerning the spiritual aridity of a 
system represented as already decadent and outworn 
when it makes its appearance in Homer. Yet the 
enduring strength of the system is nowhere so mani- 
fest as in the successful resistance which the Olympians 
offered to any serious or sustained expression of the 
monotheism which was after all latent in Greek 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 51 

religion. Monotheism was the central doctrine of 
the powerful Orphic sects, and was proclaimed by 
one school of philosophy after the other ; in the sixth 
and fifth centuries, as Professor Gilbert Murray has 
reminded us, it nearly gained the day ; ^^ it was 
inherent in Zeus himself as supreme lord of the skies ; 
yet Zeus, for all his leadership of the other Olympians, 
was never strong enough to impose himself upon art 
as a dominant religious type. The Olympians held 
their ground triumphantly and penetrated with 
Hellenism into Rome, where they nearly suffocated 
the monotheistic tendencies of Roman religion. But 
the figure of the Emperor arose in good time to expel 
these foreign gods from the scene ; and in art at 
least brought to fruition much that they had sought 
to destroy. 

It may be that once, in the Zeus of Olympia — and 
unfortunately we only have literary criticisms and 
indifferent copies or distant imitations to guide us 
in our judgment — Greek art attained through the 
genius of Pheidias to the expression of a great mono- 
theistic ideal, and made visible the Divine Fatherhood. 
But as a rule, and judging not only from extant 
copies, but from a certain number of originals, the 
Hermes of Olympia, the Demeter of Cnidus, etc.,^^ 
Greek artists, I venture to assert, failed to create 
religious figures that make the same direct appeal to 
the devotional sense as the Beau Dieu of Rheims or 



52 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

the Holy Face of Albert Durer's Sudarium, or 
Raphael's * Madonna di San Sisto,' that unsurpassed 
example of a composition in which a central group 
is enframed within a monolatric design. I do not 
say that Greek art was inferior on this account ; I, 
at any rate, believe that, where the rendering of the 
human figure is concerned, its sculpture is the greatest 
in the world ; but its aim was not primarily religious. 
In the end, and in spite of much that has been said 
to the contrary, it is the subject that informs the art, 
not directly perhaps, but by creating in connection 
with itself a spiritual temper, an atmosphere which 
emanates from the subject and reacts upon it, and 
which colours, directly or indirectly, the whole art 
of the period. In simpler language it might simply 
be called the way of looking at things. Now, because 
in Greece this way of looking at things tended to 
distribute the interest through the parts of a com- 
position rather than to concentrate it on one central 
figure, Greek artists enjoyed a freedom of action and 
of discovery which could never have been theirs had 
they been fettered by hieratic formulas requiring the 
interest to be focused on one point. They were able 
to apply themselves to the rendering of every aspect 
of the human form, which they interpreted in a manner 
probably destined to remain unsurpassed, though 
their compositions lack the depth of emotion which 
turns the decoration of Gothic Cathedrals into what 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 53 

has been so well defined as * one great act of adoration 
in stone.' 

Professor Gardner in his Principles of Greek Art 
has doubtless made out a better case for Greek 
pedimental construction than I am able to do, but 
even he can only say of the principles which govern it 
they are ' defined and rigid,' ^* two qualities which 
scarcely suggest the glow and play of artistic in- 
spiration. 

{d) Weakness and Strength of Greek Design further 
illustrated from Panel Compositions and Friezes 

In panel composition and in those parts of a frieze 
that demand a central note, Greek composition 
betrays the same weakness as in the temple pediment. 
The more I think of the suave lines of Greek sculpture, 
its voluptuous modelling and fluid contours, its studied 
avoidance of all angularity and harshness, the less do 
I feel that its greatness could ever have lain in the 
direction of monumental composition. It lacked the 
necessary solemnity and massiveness that can only be 
imparted by subordination to a central religious idea. 
For one moment, towards the close of the archaic 
period, there was a flash of inspiration which resulted 
in the uniquely beautiful design — so strong, so tense, 
so vivid — of the ' Nativity of Aphrodite ' on the 
Ludovisi Throne ; with this we may compare, as being 
already one degree less powerful, the exquisite relief 



54 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

from Eleusis with Triptolemos between his patronesses 
Demeter and Persephone {R.R., ii. 339, 3) ; ^^ here, 
too, as in the Ludovisi reUef, we have the dip at the 
centre intended to draw towards this point the lines 
of the design ; but the aesthetic conception is weak- 
ened, to my mind, by placing the figure of Triptolemos 
in profile instead of frontally. The motive continues 
to lose strength and effectiveness — at least so it seems 
to me when I compare with earlier works the * Medea 
and the Daughters of Pelias' of the Lateran {R.R., 
iii. 277, i) ; or the ' Theseus, Heracles and Peirithoos ' 
of the Torlonia collection {R. R., iii. 340, 4). After 
all, the central slab of the Parthenon frieze, with its 
humble subordinate motive, is as good an example 
as any of the weak spot in much Greek design — its 
failure, namely, to discover an arresting motive where 
this is most needed. In the same way sepulchral art 
in Attica ignored, as we shall see in another lecture, 
the definite central note which a cult of the heroised 
dead seemed to demand ; nor, as a consequence, did 
the deification of the living — a commoner event 
even in the pre-Alexandrine period than is generally 
supposed — affect, so far as we can tell, the principles 
of design. It is true that now and again we catch 
in the designs of Greek vases the central note which 
was suppressed in the major arts. The beautiful 
ritual scene in honour of Dionysus, on a vase in 
Naples, exhibits a centralised composition which does 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 55 

not fall short of a mediaeval altar-piece.^^ Every move- 
ment of the ministering Maenads, even when directed 
from the centre, is subordinated to the expressive 
sweep of the lines that flow towards the frontal image 
of the god in the middle of the picture. We perceive 
here what masters of this type of religious design the 
Greeks might have proved had not the atmosphere 
emanating from the gods of the State been hostile to 
its development. 

Greek artists, accordingly, were weakest in pedi- 
mental and other compositions, where, as in the tym- 
panum of a church, an impressive central note is de- 
manded. On the other hand, they showed themselves 
incomparable masters of design where the space to 
be decorated could be filled, as in their friezes, by 
long processional groups in which the interest must be 
distributed in order to be sustained, or by a series 
of combat or hunting scenes linked in a continuous 
chain. In this style of composition, indeed, where 
the figures need only to be arranged in relation to 
one another, the Greeks produced exquisitely cen- 
tralised designs of a kind, as on the friezes of the so- 
called sarcophagus of Alexander ; the principle which 
prevails in these reliefs, however, is not really cen- 
tralisation so much as harmony or balance of corre- 
sponding parts. A figure like the splendid horseman 
formerly identified as Alexander, on one long side of 
the Sidon sarcophagus {R.R., i. 415), may divide a 



56 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

group or mark the meeting point of convergent move- 
ments ; but the centre itself is not given emphatic 
weight and prominence. It is a mere resting-place 
in a decorative scheme where in reality all parts have 
equal value.^' 

IV. Tendencies of Greek Design in the 
Hellenistic Period 

So little Hellenistic art has survived, and that little 
is so imperfectly known, that it is difficult to realise 
the stage reached by Greek sculptors in the develop- 
ment of centralised composition when the antique 
passed into the service of Rome and was called upon 
to represent Roman subjects. Of especial interest 
would it be to know what innovations, if any, were 
introduced into art by the influence of the cult of the 
deified Alexander, whether in life or after death. 
Diodorus has left an elaborate if obscure description 
of the panel pictures that decorated his funeral 
chariot, and we find ourselves speculating as to 
whether the scheme of the picture in which Alexander 
was shown surrounded, like an Oriental despot, by 
his bodyguard, 2^ already heralded compositions such 
as those of the narrow friezes on the] principal face 
of the arch of Constantine. In art, as elsewhere, 
Alexander is certainly responsible for not a few of 
the ideas which used to be fathered upon the Roman 
Emperors, but there is little or nothing at present to 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 57 

throw light on questions which are so vital for the 
history of the antique. The Pergamene friezes show 
a number of new elements : close grouping, landscape 
setting, dramatic gesture, and so on, unknown to 
earlier art, which will reappear in the art of Rome ; 
but the action is still unfolded along a surface, with 
little tendency towards grouping masses about a 
central point {R.R., i. 207-19). 

More striking are the system of grouping and 
the arrangement of groups and figures on the frieze 
from the temple of Hecate at Lagina (first century 
B.C.), now in the Museum of Constantinople {R.R., 
i. 171-5) : the figures, for instance, are to a great 
extent shown in full face ; overlapping of either figures 
or groups is avoided, and there is an obvious attempt 
to isolate them from one another. Moreover, and 
this is above all important, there is apparent in various 
of the groups an effort at concentrating interest on a 
central motive which is far in excess of what had so 
far been attempted by the Greek antique. I would 
specially call your attention to two admirable com- 
positions on the South frieze {R.R., i. 174, 25 and 28). 
This frieze has been described as ' confused and 
awkward,' a mere imitation of Pergamene work. 
When it has been better studied it will be found to 
contain many traits which seem to have passed 
straight into the Hellenistic art of Rome. It is cer- 
tainly in the sculpture of this period that we must 



58 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

look for many of the innovations which imperfect 
knowledge had attributed to Rome. At the same 
time, in any Hellenistic sculpture so far known — 
there is little enough indeed, and that little has been 
neglected — we look in vain for the unifying touch 
which can be imparted to composition by a figure 
or a motive of commanding interest. This last and 
all-important factor was to be contributed, as we 
shall now see, by Rome and the ideas embodied in 
the figure of her Emperor. 

V. Hellenistic Art in Rome 

In the last years of the Republic and the first of 
the Empire, when the centre of artistic production 
was gradually shifting to Rome, design shows certain 
innovations which at once distinguish the Graeco- 
Roman art of Rome from that of Greek countries. 
The composition of the * Sacrifice to Mars ' in the 
Louvre {R.R., i. 277), from a basis set up about 
B.C. 42 by Gn. Domitius Ahenobarbus in the temple 
of Neptune, is an instance in point. It exhibits the 
same tendency to a full-face pose of the figures already 
noted in the case of certain later Hellenistic sculptures, 
but this is combined with a symmetry severer than 
any observed in Greek schemes of decoration. The 
altar occupies the centre ; Domitius, in sacrificial 
attire, is on the right ; Mars, a stately figure in armour, 
balances him on the left. The god is present at the 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 59 

sacrifice in his own honour, and stands in a prominent 
position, with one foot on the altar step, as if in token 
of possession ; at the same time the turn of head and 
body so draw him into the scene of the reHef that the 
interest of the central group is about equally divided 
between the god and Domitius, who in the spirit of 
Greek art turns not towards the centre but towards 
the advancing procession of the sacred animals. ^^ 
With regard to the general composition, I should like 
for one instant to compare it with that of the two 
groups from the south frieze of Lagina ; you will be 
struck, I think, by the contrast which the stiffer, 
almost crystallised poses of the figures at the centre 
of the Roman relief offer to the fluid lines of the 
Hellenistic example. The composition of the sides, 
on the other hand, is more frankly Hellenistic, and 
if we had time to look at it in detail we should find it 
to be closely inspired by Hellenistic prototypes. 

Some thirty years later, in B.C. 12-9, the Ara 
Pacis Augustae, set up by command of Augustus to 
commemorate his successful settlement of Gaul 
and Spain, was decorated with scenes intended to 
represent the Emperor followed by a long cortege 
{R.R., i. 232-7). The difficulty which archaeologists 
have experienced in identifying the figure of Augustus 
shows how slight an accent was laid upon the 
leading personages of the pageant. At one time 
the Emperor was seen in the stately aged man, with 



6o APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

veiled head, afterwards variously interpreted as 
Agrippa, Caesar, and Lepidus {R.R., i. 235, 3) ; again, 
he was thought to be the figure surrounded by lictors 
and jiamines on a slab which is now rejected from 
the Ara Pads (below, p. 79), while Augustus seems 
now finally identified with a veiled figure (who has 
also been taken for the Rex Sacrijiculus) on a slab 
discovered in 1902 {R. R., i. 236, 3). We cannot 
imagine any such difficulties and uncertainties attend- 
ing the identification of Christ on mediaeval or early 
Renaissance monuments, or that of the Emperor on 
the works of the late Empire. It is true that the 
tendency to place figures in a full-face position makes 
itself felt here as on the basis of Ahenobarbus, with 
this difference, that in the earlier work the figures 
are isolated in space, and in the later they are isolated 
against a crowded background by means of the frontal 
turn imparted to them.^° But without a dominant 
central motive and without any monolatric scheme 
of the attendant figures the invention is ineffective. 
The main spirit of the composition of the Ara Pacis 
remains Hellenic, still aiming at diffusion rather than 
at concentration of interest. 

VI. The Imperial Apotheosis and Deification 
AS A Theme of Art 

This Hellenistic art transplanted to Roman soil 
contained, it is true, many new and vital traits, such 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 6i 

as the crowding of the figures ; the introduction of 
children ; the vivacity of the glance introduced by 
hollowing the pupil of the eye, which imparted to it 
a new vitality.'^ Yet it might easily have degener- 
ated into meaningless imitation of Greek formulas 
and become purely academic, had it not been for the 
intrusion of a fresh idea destined slowly to transform 
all the laws of antique design. This was the doctrine 
of the Imperial Apotheosis, of the deification of the 
Emperor after death, upon the art-type of which 
Cumont's researches have thrown so vivid a light.^^ 
The doctrine is so familiar that I need hardly remind 
you of the manner of its introduction by Augustus 
in honour of his adopted father, the great Julius 
Caesar, whose star, the Julium sidus of Horace, the 
Caesaris astrum of Vergil, had been seen in the sky 
heralding the new god.^^ Caesar is said to have 
received an altar and a column twenty feet high at 
the spot where his body was burnt, and where after- 
wards rose the temple of Divus Julius, the core of 
which stands to this day.^^ We may note inciden- 
tally that column and altar should be borne in mind 
by students of Roman art for the light which they 
throw upon the later columns of Nero at Mayence, and 
of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The 
deification of Augustus, already acknowledged in 
his lifetime as Divi Jilius, followed as a matter of 
course, and the Apotheosis of the Roman Emperor 



62 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

soon became the rule.^^ It was based largely on that 
cult of the ruler which was so prominent a religious 
and political feature under the Ptolemies of Egypt 
and the Graeco-Syrian Seleucids : ^® the very wreath 
worn by the Caesars was imitated from that of the 
Hellenistic rulers ; their eagle was borrowed from 
Oriental solar symbols ; yet from the first the art 
form of the Imperial Apotheosis acquired a distinctly 
Western and Roman character, and this because the 
primary inspiring factors were already an integral 
part of religious belief. 

The religious conscience was better prepared for 
the doctrine of the Imperial Deification than is often 
supposed. Apotheosis, admission of the great dead 
among the gods, was a not unfamiliar idea in pre- 
Imperial Rome. Ennius (239-170 B.C.) had already 
sung of the admission of the elder Scipio into the 
courts of heaven.^' Not only had Cicero desired 
Apotheosis for his daughter, ^^ but he has left us in the 
wonderful myth of the ' Dream of Scipio,' ^^ a noble 
vision as to the ultimate fate of those who had de- 
served well of the State. The picture he presents 
of the elder Scipio appearing to his illustrious descen- 
dant and pointing to Carthage de excelso et pleno 
stellarum inlustri et claro guodam loco — implying the 
ascent of the Soul to the Stars — must have belonged 
to a widely current range of ideas. On a relief from 
Amiternum, for instance, which we shall consider in 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 63 

detail in the next lecture (p. 175), representing the 
funeral procession of a military official of the close 
of the late Republican or early Augustan period, the 
idea of astral Apotheosis is conveyed by the star- 
spangled canopy above the bier. Such conceptions, 
as we shall see, were largely the fruit of the teaching 
of Posidonius of Apamea and of the Orphic beliefs 
which had filtered into Rome from Southern Italy. 
The Stoic philosophy which attained to its fullest 
expression in Rome from the end of the Republic 
onwards, laid special stress on the reabsorption of the 
soul into the fiery aether after its separation from 
the body. All these ideas were part of a new religious 
movement that set in before the Empire, though, as 
we shall see in the lecture on the ' After Life,' the belief 
in the immortality of the soul and in the soul's return 
to the heavenly seats, was to gain fresh lustre from 
the Apotheosis of the ruler. 

It must also be remembered that the divine honours 
so frequently rendered to Roman generals and 
governors in Greece and the East, must have early 
familiarised Romans with the idea of the deification 
of a living man. According to Plutarch, Flamininus, 
the 'Liberator' of Greece (b.c. 196), had been as- 
sociated at Chalcis with the worship of both Heracles 
and Apollo ; **• Pompey, it seems, had received 
several temples ; ^^ Cicero records with pride that he 
refused similar honours — among them shrines (fana) 



64 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

— offered to him in B.C. 50 during his governorship 
of Cilicia ; *^ and it is probably present to all your 
minds that Cicero twits Verres more than once in 
the famous second Verrine Oration, for allowing 
games (praedara ilia Verria) to be celebrated in his 
honour.*^ As to Julius Caesar, whatever his own per- 
sonal beliefs and attitude of mind, there is no doubt 
that he received and accepted unmistakable offers of 
deification alike from the Greek cities and in Rome.** 

Above all, this deification of the ruler could not 
come as a new conception to a people who, like the 
Romans, had from a period of high antiquity been 
accustomed to see victorious generals, to whom the 
honours of a triumph were accorded, arrayed in the 
insignia of the chief god of the state, Jupiter Optimus 
Maximus himself. It is not sufficient to say with 
the classical dictionaries that the general wore for 
the time being the attributes of Jupiter : during the 
pageant the general was Jupiter, *5 in token of which 
his face, in early times at least, was painted blood- 
red like the god's ; he carried the thunderbolt and 
ivory sceptre ; he wore the toga picta — the great 
embroidered mantle — as talisman of dominion and 
of victory ; and he rode in the four-horse chariot, the 
quadriga, which is no other than the chariot of the Sun 
god — of Sol,*® who, long before he figured as Apollo 
in the Graeco-Roman Pantheon, was identified with 
the great Jupiter of the Capitol. I venture to assert 



PLATE VII. 




^. > 




DIVVS AVGVSTVS 65 

that the growing beHef in an after life of blessedness 
reserved for those who had deserved well of the 
State, combined with the temporary deification of 
the Triumphator, were more powerful factors in Im- 
perial Deification and Imperial Apotheosis than any 
attempt on the part of the ruler to model an astute 
piece of religious policy on that of Alexander and his 
successors. Religious ideas, it has been well said, 
* are easily assimilated only when there already 
exists an indigenous system of thought into which 
they readily fit.' *' Had not the soil been ready, 
neither Imperial Apotheosis nor Imperial Deification 
would have struck root so quickly and so firmly. 
We now have to examine their influence upon art. 
Here, too, I hope to show you that the way had been 
prepared — that Etrusco- Roman art had a predilection 
for certain centralised formulas, the reflection perhaps 
of monotheistic religious tendencies, which were to 
mature in the service of the Imperial idea. 

VII. The Monuments of the Apotheosis and Kin- 
dred Works from Augustus to the End of 
THE Julio-Claudian Dynasty 

(a) The Imperial Idea in Augustan Art ' 

In the age of Augustus we are a long way still from 

the adoption of the old frontal pose into the official 

art of the Empire. The earliest instance of Imperial 

Apotheosis, except on coins, occurs on an altar which 

E 



66 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

stands in the Cortile del Belvedere of the Vatican 
(Helbig, 155 ; =R. R., iii. 398) .* The purely Augustan 
style of the reliefs is of singular beauty (plates vii., 
viii.), yet the monument has attracted little attention. 
The Victory on the principal face carries a shield in- 
scribed with the dedication of the altar to Augustus by 
the Senate and the People. As the Emperor is given the 
title of Pontifex Maximus, the date of the dedication 
must be subsequent to B.C. 12, in which year Augustus 
assumed the high priesthood left vacant by the death 
of Lepidus. The relief on the left evidently com- 
memorates the restoration of the cult of the Lares 
by Augustus between 14 and 7 B.C. ; this composition 
is centralised round the altar somewhat after the 
manner of the scene of sacrifice on the back of the 
basis of Domitius Ahenobarbus from the temple of 
Neptune. On the one side, Augustus himself, accom- 
panied by two attendants ; facing him on the other 
side is the priest capite velato, who stretches both hands 
to the Emperor over the altar to receive from him the 
statuettes of the two Lares. The relief of the opposite 
face bears a direct relation to the ceremony we have 
just witnessed ; it represents the ' Prodigy of the 
Laurentine Sow,' likewise depicted on the Ara Pacis, 

* A vast literature has gathered round the Imperial Apotheosis and 
Deification, but the numerous monuments have so far never been 
grouped together or exhaustively discussed. The theme is one that 
should prove attractive to students, and I heartily recommend it to 
any one who is looking round for the subject of a thesis. 



PLATE Vni. 





DIVVS AVGVSTVS 67 

by which Father Aeneas was to know that he had 
reached the spiritual metropolis of Latium. And on 
the rear of the altar occurs what is probably the 
earliest representation of the Imperial Apotheosis : 
the first Divus, the great Caesar himself, is seen borne 
heavenward in the flaming chariot drawn by winged 
horses in the presence of Augustus, here figuring as 
the Divi filius of the inscription, and the princes of 
his house. Above the Divus hovers the Eagle of the 
Apotheosis, now much effaced ; the Sun in his chariot, 
and Coelus personified as Jupiter within the arching 
folds of the cosmic mantle, come down to meet him 
from the left and from the right respectively. 
Cumont has aptly remarked that the intended corre- 
spondence between the chariot that comes down from 
heaven and the one which rises upward from the 
earth shows without a doubt that in this first mani- 
festation of the Imperial cult in plastic art, a relation 
is already clearly established between the deified 
personage and the Sun.^^ 

The subject of the Apotheosis is common on gems. 
We have no actual example showing the Apotheosis 
of Augustus, but two cameos with the deification of 
princes of his house will serve to recall the familiar 
scheme to your minds. One, a fine cameo in the 
Cabinet des Medailles, shows a young Julio-Claudian 
Prince, possibly Germanicus, borne aloft by the eagle, 
and bearing in his left hand the cornucopiae ; in his 



68 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

right is the Htuus or augur's staff, while Victory hovers 
over him with the crown {R.R., ii. 236, 4). The 
second cameo is in the Library of Nancy ; it repro- 
duces the same scheme, but this time the Imperial 
personage is Nero, and in his right hand he carries 
in place of the augural staff the actual image of 
Victory holding a crown as if to place it on his head.** 
We shall see when we come to discuss ancient beliefs 
as to the After Life and the Apotheosis of the soul that 
the eagle, messenger of the sun, was from a period of 
high antiquity a favourite vehicle of the soul in its 
ascent to the celestial sphere. The first example 
quoted shows that deification was early extended to 
other members of the Imperial family besides the 
Emperor. The doctrine soon affected the religious 
status of the living ruler also. Since he was Divijilius 
he was exalted spiritually above the rest of mankind. 
The most splendid of all antique cameos, the Grand 
Camee de France of the Cabinet des Medailles in 
Paris, shows us in pictorial form the ideas that at- 
tached as early as the time of Tiberius to the Emperor 
and the Imperial family (plate ix. i).^** Here in the 
centre is Tiberius, enthroned, wearing the aegis and 
other attributes of Jupiter, and though as Trium- 
phator the Emperor had a traditional right to these 
insignia, yet the fixing of the Imperial image in art, 
with all the attributes of the chief deity of the State, 
must have gone far towards building up the con- 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 69 

ception of a deified living ruler. Let me put this 
rather more emphatically — my point is that as 
Triumphator, the Emperor, like all generals to whom 
triumph was accorded (see above, p. 64) , was for the 
time being the god, was in very truth Jupiter Optimus 
Maximus, and that art contributes to give perman- 
ence and fixity to the otherwise ephemeral notion of a 
deified prince. By the side of Tiberius sits his mother 
Livia, represented as Ceres, with ears of corn and 
poppy flowers, since the security brought about by 
the Imperial victories encourages the divinities of 
fertility and increase to put forth their powers ; 
around the Imperial pair are grouped the younger 
princes and princesses of their house. Such an image 
as this central group seems conjured up by the de- 
scription in ancient authors of the Triumphator sur- 
rounded during the pageant by his sons and other 
members of his family, and even by friends of high 
standing. In the upper zone appears the majestic 
figure of Augustus, partly supported on a figure which 
from its Phrygian costume must be one of the mythic 
ancestors of the Julian race — Anchises or lulus. On 
the left is a deified prince, thought to be the elder 
Drusus ; on the right, springing towards Augustus 
on a magnificent winged steed, is another deified 
prince, possibly Marcellus. The winged horse, like 
the winged chariot on the Augustan altar in the 
Vatican, is the vehicle of the soul's ascent,^^ and 



70 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

belongs to the same cycle of ideas as the winged 
chariot in which the dead are rapt to the other world 
on archaic Greek and Etruscan monuments, a sub- 
ject about which I shall have much to say in the 
next lecture. As we look at this wonderful pictorial 
allegory of Augustus and the deified princes of his 
house we are reminded of the lines : 

quos inter Augustus recumbens 
purpureo bibit ore nectar. 

Hor., Od. iii. 3, 12.^^ 

May not indeed the Horatian verses have been 
directly inspired by some picture similar to the one 
before us ? The figures and groups both of the 
Vienna cameo and of the Grand Camee represent, 
I surmise, actual triumphal pictures or triumphal 
statuary groups taken from real life. 

The cult of the living Emperor, of the divi filius, 
was the natural sequel to the deification of his pre- 
decessor. We already hear of divine honours being 
offered to Augustus, and, it is commonly alleged, 
refused by him. Like Caesar he may have feared 
lest the simple-minded Romans should look askance 
at any attempt on his part to invest himself with the 
religious attributes associated in their mind with the 
idea of an Oriental despot. In Rome, it is generally 
said, he was content to be worshipped in the guise of 
his own Genius, a conception beautifully expressed 
in the statue of the Vatican (Helbig, 304), though a 



PLATE IX. 






1. The Gram) l vm^e de France. 

2. Coins with Apotheosis of Sabina and of Faustina. 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 71 

host of statues show that he wiUingly allowed the 
images of the gods to bear his features. ^^ At any 
rate Augustus soon represented himself as compelled 
to accept divine honours in the eastern provinces of 
the Empire, where he wisely recognised that the figure 
of the Roman military leader would not carry with 
it the necessary prestige unless invested with a super- 
natural character. But in order to soothe Roman 
susceptibilities he made it a condition that his cult 
should be associated with that of the goddess Roma, 
as in the lovely temple at Ancyra, erected to Roma 
and Augustus as early as 25 B.C. by the grateful 
Galatians, who had that year received autonomy 
from the Emperor. Other well-known instances of 
the double cult are the temples at Pergamon and at 
Nicomedia, while the great altars at Lugdunum and 
Tarraco show that the cult soon spread to the West.^* 
Tiberius, a man of stiffer morality, perhaps, than 
Augustus, but with less imagination, declined, accord- 
ing to Tacitus (Annals, iv. 38), the divine honours 
offered him in Spain, ^^ though the Grand Camee 
shows him as not averse to being represented with 
all the insignia of a god. 

Augustus and Roma appear enthroned side by side 
on a magnificent cameo of the Imperial Library of 
Vienna {R.R., ii. 144).^^ The cameo is specially 
important for our purpose, owing to its strongly 
centralised composition ; Roma and Augustus form 



72 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

a compact group, as the Dea looks round at her 
paredros, who, wearing the insignia of Jupiter as 
Triumphator, receives the crown of victory or of 
empire from a figure symbolising the Oikoumene, the 
inhabited earth. Below the throne is the Eagle, the 
bird of Jupiter, symbol at once of Empire and of 
Apotheosis ; between Roma and Augustus appears 
the natal sign of the Emperor, the constellation of 
Capricorn.^' The other figures of the allegorical 
group on the right of Augustus are, besides the 
Oikoumene already mentioned, Neptune, the watery 
element well placed here with the figures of the in- 
habited world and of Terra Mater, the Nature 
Mother, who is seen reclining below holding the horn 
of jplenty, and with children about her. In all these 
Roman monuments which commemorate victory 
and triumph we find incessant insistence on the fact 
that the fertility of the earth, encouraged and pro- 
tected by the Pax Augusta, is the grand result of the 
Emperor's victorious campaigns. On the left is the 
young victorious prince himself alighting from his 
chariot ; and to make his identity doubly sure the 
natal constellation of Tiberius, the Scorpion, is 
depicted on the shield that hangs from the tree 
which Roman legionaries are setting up as a trophy 
of victory in the lower frieze. These two cameos, 
worthy to be placed in the Imperial collection, the 
dactyliotheca of which Pliny has left us an account, 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 73 

are almost certainly copies or adaptations of large 
pictures set up in temples or public buildings, where 
they would largely influence the popular conception 
of the Imperial power. 

The spiritual atmosphere now beginning to envelop 
the Imperial person is everywhere manifest in the new 
prominence given to his image in art. On one of 
the cups from Boscoreale, in the Edmond de 
Rothschild collection in Paris, the attitude of 
Augustus is already made more emphatic than on 
the Ara Pacis.^® On the one side Augustus receives 
the submission of conquered barbarians. The noble 
pose and gesture of the Emperor at once command 
attention. The tendency, already apparent on the 
Ara Pacis, of isolating the figure against a crowded 
background is worked up here to a higher effective- 
ness. A new pathetic quality, characteristic of Im- 
perial art, is introduced, and that the central scene 
should be one of a father recommending his little 
child to the Imperial mercy inclines me to think that 
Vergil had some real picture in his mind when he 
wrote the celebrated 

To tame the proud, the fettered slave to free ; 
These are imperial arts, and worthy thee. 

(Dryden's transl.) 

On the other side we see Augustus surrounded by 
allegorical figures and divinities. In both scenes he 
is placed not in profile but in three-quarter view, in 



74 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

a first attempt to relate him not only to the attendant 
personages in the picture, but also to the spectator. 
Especially is this the case in the scene where the 
Emperor, enthroned in solitary majesty, is approached 
on the one side by figures allegorical of Empire, on the 
other by a group of the conquered provinces, who 
are brought into the Imperial presence by Mars ; the 
first instance, I believe, of his appearance in the 
direct service of the Princeps. The old Latin war- 
god was not merely killed, as has lately been said, by 
literary convention,^^ but, like the other gods, includ- 
ing Jupiter Optimus Maximus, his godhead paled 
and eventually disappeared before the rising numen 
Augusti. Not Vergil, nor any Augustan poet, but 
the Emperor himself, or, more correctly, the Imperial 
idea, is responsible for ' taking the life out of Jupiter, 
Mars and Apollo.' The gods had perforce to efface 
themselves before the Imperial power emanating from 
the Emperor, though the Emperor might for a time 
encourage their worship and reinstate their cults with 
a new splendour. 

The Emperor's majestic pose on the Rothschild cup 
is in complete harmony with the spirit of the epoch 
which witnessed the birth of the Imperial cult and 
of the religion of Augustus and Roma. To a great 
extent these cults were evolved out of ideas familiar 
to the Orient from the period of Alexander the Great 
onwards ; yet the Emperor as you see him here is 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 75 

essentially a Western conception, and his image will 
retain this character even when in time, by the con- 
stant admixture of Oriental ideas, he himself can be 
described as more of an Oriental despot than of a 
military leader of the West. 

(6) Influence of Augustan Art upon Popular 
Imagination 

The compositions before us help us to grasp man- 
kind's belief that the Emperor was the promised 
redeemer and saviour {crcorrjp Kal 6vepryeT7]<;) who, ac- 
cording to the prophecies of the Sibyl, was to close 
the cycle of the ages and open a new era of salvation 
and peace, who was to bid the gates of war be shut, 
and the golden age of Saturn return.^'' 

To students of the Augustan period, it is clear that 
Augustus called in the service of art to help his re- 
ligious schemes to an extent as great, or even greater 
than that of poetry. The assistance he received 
from poetry has been fully recognised,®^ but art with 
its greater because more concrete influence is often 
dismissed as almost irrelevant to the question. 
English scholars especially have a tendency to under- 
rate the role played in the formation of religious ideas 
by the visible form given to deities and abstractions.®^ 
Yet the works we have just considered — whether repre- 
senting the actual deification, or merely showing the 
Emperor in the majestic pose which his exalted state 



76 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

demanded — seen in every public place, at every street 
corner, repeated, we may add, in miniature for the 
sideboard and the dining-table, must have gone far 
to fill the popular imagination with the Imperial 
idea. We are apt to forget that art in antiquity has 
the same didactic mission as in the Middle Ages before 
the invention of printing. Its function was largely 
utilitarian : one of its purposes was to impress upon 
the people a definite attitude towards religion or 
politics. For one man who had access to Vergil or 
Horace, thousands would see on their daily rounds 
the great monuments on which, to borrow Whistler's 
phrase, ' the nation had learnt to hew its history in 
marble.' The opening of the First Georgic, the Sixth 
Aeneid, the Imperial lyrics of Horace were possibly 
less potent factors in the establishment of the Empire 
than the pictures of the Imperial ' might, majesty and 
dominion,' of which cameos and coins and silver cups 
have preserved for us the copies ; the lovely com- 
position of the young Tiberius, who descends with 
modest grace from the triumphal chariot to do 
homage to Roma and Imperator in the Vienna Cameo, 
or the group of the deified young heroes of the Grand 
Camee, would serve the same high purpose as the 
famous Horatian odes (Book iv. 4 and 14) which 
celebrate the military valour of the stepsons of 
Augustus. Poet and artist alike contrived to endear 
the Imperial dynasty to the people by fostering 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 77 

admiration for the prowess of individual princes. 

Not the Emperor alone but his house is exalted in 

these scenes as 

tutela praesens 

Italiae dominaeque Romae. 

(c) Characteristics of Roman Art favourable to 
Expression of the Imperial Idea 

Before resuming our examination of the monuments 
which commemorate the Emperor, I should like to 
point out that outside the official art of Hellenised 
Rome factors survived which were to gain in import- 
ance as suiting the growing Imperial idea. Beside 
the new Hellenic manner the intrusion or persist- 
ence of principles long rejected by classic art, such as 
frontality and the isolation of the figure, may be ob- 
served. Both principles make themselves distinctly 
felt in the stiff portraiture of Roman sepulchral monu- 
ments,®^ and seem to govern such temple decoration 
as survives. In pedimental composition the Greeks 
had often been content with a frieze-like arrangement 
of the figures, though the shape of the space demanded 
a dominant central figure ; but the Romans seem to 
have sought from the first to place a well-centralised 
group or a frontal figure beneath the apex of the 
triangle. This principle is already obvious in the 
terra-cotta decorations of the ancient Latin temples.®* 
The pediments from the temple of Apollo at Civita 
Castellana {Faleri Veteres), to which belonged a fine 



78 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

torso of the god, must have been centraHsed in com- 
position, to judge from the pose of the torso, which is 
turned nearly full to the front and moves, so to speak, 
out of its architectural setting (Helbig, 1784).®^ The 
same remark applies to the two pediments from 
Luni at Florence, where in the one a triad of divinities 
with Apollo in the centre is placed facing the spec- 
tator, while in the other, which represents the 
slaughter of the Niobids, the desire to get a frontal 
figure as central note is carried so far that a Niobid 
on horseback is shown riding straight out of the 
frame.^^ Even the curiously involved battle scene 
on the pediment from the temple of Telamon shows 
a tendency towards frontal composition. The same 
laws of design make themselves felt in the temple 
sculptures of Augustan Rome. The pediment of the 
temple of Mars Ultor, preserved on a monument of 
Julio-Claudian date walled into the Villa Medici, 
shows a god in the centre {R.R., iii. 313, i). The 
pediment of the temple of the Magna Mater from the 
same series has the black stone from Pessinus placed 
right in the centre of the pediment, with recumbent 
figures at either side {R.R., iii. 313, 2),®' while the 
pediment of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus 
in the Capitol, though known to us only in an Antonine 
version, must always have exhibited a strongly cen- 
tralised composition, with the emphatic accent laid 
upon the figure of Jupiter in the centre {R.R., iii. 203). 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 79 

The monotheistic element in Roman religion, so 
eloquently brought forward by Mr Warde Fowler in 
his latest book, seems to confront us in these com- 
positions. As we look at them we reflect that had it 
not been for the stifling influences of Greek Olympian- 
ism the old Capitoline Jupiter, who came so near 
embodying a monotheistic religion, might have called 
forth a centralised art type to set beside the Imperial 
and the Christian Maiestates. As it was the Em- 
peror and not Jupiter Optimus Maximus was re- 
sponsible for bringing out the specifically Roman 
element in antique art. 

We shall now see that the growing necessity for 
giving prominence to the figure of the deified Emperor 
brought back by degrees the old frontal method of 
composition, never, as we see, entirely discarded by 
Italic art, even at the period when Greek influence 
was at its height. 

{d) Principles of Roman Design in the Service of 
the Imperial Idea 

On a series of five reliefs, once allotted to the Ara 
Pads and now thought to belong to an altar erected 
by a Julio- Claudian Emperor, perhaps Claudius him- 
self, we have a processional scene and sacrificial 
episode in the style of the Ara Pacis, but the figure 
of the Emperor or leading Imperial personage is em- 
phatically distinguished by its pose from his escort. 



8o APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

On the Ara Pads all the figures, not excepting the one 
now usually identified as Augustus,^^ are either placed 
in profile or else, as in the case of the so-called Livia 
or Julia, though the body is given a frontal pose, the 
profile idea is suggested or recaptured by the turn of 
the head or the glance of the eye. On the later slab of 
Julio-Claudian date the Princeps is placed in an 
attitude which is almost frontal, the outward direc- 
tion of which is emphasised by the searching outward 
gaze {R.R., i. 235, 2). 

On a charming altar to Augustus and the Lares in 
the Uffizi, we see Augustus, flanked by Livia and one 
of his grandsons, in a pose so far tending to the 
frontal as to suggest that the Imperial figure is already 
presented to the homage both of the personages at 
either side of him and of the spectator {R.R., iii. 32).^^ 
Augustus, who is represented as officiating augur, 
clad in sacerdotal vestments, with the curved 
augural rod in his right hand, the patera in his left, 
and at his feet a bird picking at the sacred grain, is 
here in the service of the gods ; but the isolation of the 
figure and its self-involved character, combined with 
the monolatric element contributed by the two 
attendant personages, impart to the composition 
the same grave dignity that we shall discover at a 
much later date in the group of Septimius Servius 
and lulia Domna sacrificing. 

The great storied column found on the site of the 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 8i 

ancient Celtic Moguntiacum, and now in the Museum 
at Mayence {R.R., i. i86, 187), shows even more 
directly than any monument of Rome or Italy the 
force of the religious beliefs that were beginning to 
centre about the person of the Emperor by the middle 
of the first century. It was dedicated about 66 a.d. 
to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, for the safety of the 
Emperor Nero. I have recently offered a new inter- 
pretation of certain of the figures of this column and 
of its general intention, which was the glorification 
of the Empire as represented by the Emperor ; and 
it is unnecessary to resume the subject here.''" I will 
only draw your attention to the position occupied by 
the Emperor on the top drum but one, immediately 
below the protecting figure of Juno Coelestis, who, in 
her character of Queen of the Sky, is flanked by the 
chariots of the Sun and Moon to show that the Orbis 
Romanus is conterminous with the world. The 
Emperor attended by the Imperial Lares stands in 
simple frontal attitude, offering libation at an altar ; 
his escort is formed by the ancient gods of Latium 
and the allegorical figures of the Empire, who look 
down at the sacrifice accomplished in their honour 
at the altar in front of the column. The Emperor 
is shown sacrificing to the gods, and is therefore not 
as yet of their number ; but his emphatic position, 
in line with Pax, Tellus and Victory, and surrounded 
by ancient Latin divinities of fertility and increase 

F 



82 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

marks him as dispenser of the blessings of peace.'^ 
Nero — the Emperor — is represented here, in accord- 
ance with the legend on one of his coins, as 
o-corrjp T^<? olKovfiiv7)<; — Saviour of Mankind '^ — and the 
Empire as the source whence flow the blessings which 
he guards and dispenses. The column is dedicated 
to Jupiter, Best and Highest, the builder-up of the 
Roman Empire, protector and arbiter of the des- 
tinies of the Roman world (see below, p. 85). But 
even the numen of Jupiter had in time to make way 
for the numen of the Augustus. On the column of 
Mayence we look at the prologue, so to speak, of a 
great drama, the last scene of which is carved on the 
attic of the front face of the arch of Trajan at Bene- 
vento, where the gods abdicate in favour of the 
Emperor, to whom the old Jupiter of the Capitol 
hands over the thunderbolt as time-honoured symbol 
of his power (p. 85). Similarly, on the columns 
which symbolised in the provinces the might of 
Rome, a group representing the numen Augusti 
trampling over the foes of the Empire supplanted in 
time the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. 

Subjects akin in spirit to the reliefs of the column 
of Mayence are very frequent at this period. I may 
recall to you the beautiful silver dish from Aquileia 
at Vienna {R.R., ii. 146, i), showing an Emperor 
(Claudius ?) sacrificing ; Terra Mater reclines below 
him ; above is Jupiter, and all around are divinities 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 83 

of fertility and increase. The evidence of the monu- 
ments goes far to show that the Augustan age which 
saw the gradual degradation of the divinities of the 
old Graeco- Roman Pantheon first definitely sought for 
some visible expression of the monotheistic principle 
which is at the root of the highest religions as of the 
greatest art. The central formula by which Roman 
art gradually sought to isolate the Emperor viewed 
almost as a monotheistic source of life and prosperity, 
acquired in time so exalted a character that it could 
afterwards clothe the God-man of Christianity. 

VII I. Centralisation of Design from the Flavians 
TO THE Close of the Dynasty of the Severi 

The reliefs of the arch of Titus, which date from 
the latter end of the first century a.d., partake of 
two distinct methods. The famous procession on 
the panels of the archway reproduces a scheme 
familiar to Greek art, but with the same emphasis 
laid on the figure of the Emperor in the chariot that 
we have already noticed in the figure of Augustus on 
the cup from Boscoreale. The chariot with the 
Imperial group is placed somewhere between a three- 
quarter and a full view, and moves at a different 
angle from the horses and from the rest of the pro- 
cession {R.R., i. 274). Wickhoff, who first drew 
attention to the artistic value of these reliefs, saw in 
the position of the chariot a mere miscalculation of 



84 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

perspective ; I believe that we are here in presence of 
an attempt to emphasise the Imperial personage by 
bringing him full to the front. The relief on the 
keystone of the vault, with the apotheosis of Titus, 
leaves no doubt as to the artistic intention : here 
the Emperor is no longer shown in profile, but is 
twisted round somewhat uncomfortably on the eagle 
that bears him upward to the heavenly spheres so 
that both may be presented in full frontal aspect 
{R.R., I 276, I). 

As a proof of the strength and vitality of the more 
purely Greek tradition, I should like to show you 
immediately after these massive compositions from 
the arch of Titus, a relief, likewise of the Flavian 
period, which is in the Louvre ; it represents the pro- 
cession of the Suovetaurilia — of the sacred pig, bull 
and ram — led by a personage who has lately been 
recognised as Domitian.'^ The sustained rhythm, 
the evenly balanced composition and the studied 
avoidance of over-emphasis at any point are obvious 
Greek traits. Technically the work has considerable 
merits : the relief is pleasing ; the modelling clear ; 
the feeling for the tactile qualities of surface true. 
The two laurel trees, which by the way are possibly 
those that stood on each side of the Domus Augustana 
on the Palatine, betray a close observation of nature 
in the rendering of the shimmering leaves, of their 
stiff texture, and crinkled edges. For all its quiet 



DIWS AVGVSTVS 85 

beauty this type of composition was doomed, though 
it died slowly and now and again flared up in a work 
of real inspiration. 

The whole interest of Roman sculpture or of sculp- 
ture in Rome, whichever way you may prefer to put 
it, now gathers increasingly about the deeds of the 
Roman people and the person of the Roman Emperor. 
We have only to think of the emphatic reiteration 
of the Imperial figure on the reliefs of the Trajan 
Column and of the Trajanic battle scenes removed 
to the arch of Constantine {R.R., i. 252, 253). It 
is, however, at Benevento, on the arch erected in 
115 to glorify Trajan's home and foreign policy, that 
we become definitely aware of certain changes of 
political temper and religious thought which were to 
invest representations of the Emperor with a pre- 
dominating majesty. In each of the twelve episodes 
represented on the arch the main stress is always on 
the figure of Trajan ; concentration, not diffusion of 
interest, is the order of the day. On the reliefs of 
the attic the great Olympians receive Trajan, and the 
old Jupiter of the Capitol, with his paredroi Juno 
and Minerva on either side of him, hands over to 
Trajan the thunderbolt, no longer to be the ephemeral 
attribute of the Triumphator, but to hold as his own.'* 
An eminent scholar has pointed out that Jupiter 
marks by his act the intrusion of a new material and 
spiritual order into the Empire.''^ Let us dwell for a 



86 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

moment longer on the extraordinary significance 
of the scene. Mr. Warde-Fowler has recently ex- 
pounded afresh the meaning of the great Roman 
Jupiter, the numen praestantissimae mentis of Cicero 
* protecting and controlling the destinies of the 
Roman world ' — the god who rose above the Graeco- 
Roman Pantheon to an exalted position comparable 
to that accorded to the god of monotheistic peoples. 

This deity was not for small things and small people 
but for great ones ; there is a breadth and range about 
his action which exceeds that of any Graeco-Roman god, 
for he is indeed the reflection of the greatness of his 
people, the religious interpretation of their amazing 
strength. — Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 53. 

Yet the great Jupiter, with something about him 
of the Hebrew Jehovah, ruler, as Horace says {Odes, 
i. 12, 17), of heaven and earth 

unde nil maius generatur ipso 

nee viget quidquam simile aut secundum, 

had to yield before the numen Augusti. The reliefs of 
the Benevento arch, like the allegorical group of the 
Numen trampling over the foes of the Empire, sym- 
bolised as a giant or other monster, which supplants 
the image of Jupiter on the later * Jupiter and Giant 
columns,' tell us in the direct and lucid language 
of art of the god's abdication before the Emperor. 
But the capitulation of Jupiter entailed that of all 
the Olympians whom the old god brings in his 




PLATE X. 




The Abdication" of Jupiter. 
Benevento. 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 87 

train, though he had never shown himself quite 
capable of overruling them. The influence on design 
was immediate. The Pantheon of gods, each claim- 
ing his place in the scheme of representation, so long 
the leading theme of sculpture, definitely vanishes from 
the scene, and from henceforth a single figure bestows 
on plastic composition a clear and dominant motive. 

For these Beneventan scenes Oriental influences 
might also be claimed ; something of the same idea 
inspired the sculptor of those strange slabs that so 
impressively crown the Nemrud Dagh between 
Samosata and the Euphrates, and mark the sepulchre 
of Antiochus i. of Commagene {R.R., i. 193-6). The 
ruler and his ancestors are each grouped with a god : 
in one instance the Oriental despot grasps the hand 
of Zeus ; on another that of Heracles ; while a third 
relief shows Antiochus and Apollo-Mithras standing 
face to face on terms of equality {R.R., i. 195, 2, 3, 4). 
It is the dawn of the idea, the fulfilment of which we 
see on the Benevento arch. On the Syrian monu- 
ment, erected about 40 B.C., the gods consent to admit 
the monarch to equality with themselves ; on the 
Roman monument, some hundred and fifty years 
later, they yield their place to him as their successor 
before they vanish for ever from the scene (plate x.) . 

So true is it that the hybrid character which makes 
much Roman art distasteful comes from the attempt 
to ' adapt its indigenous inheritance of ideas to the 



88 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

different conception of the civilisation which came 
from Greece,' that we are not sorry to see the Graeco- 
Roman gods become subordinate and disappear. And 
Delia Seta, from whom I quote, goes on to say 
appositely : 

Hence the peculiar characteristics of its literature and 
its art, hence the diversity of its constituting elements, 
a literature and an art non-original when they present 
Greek myths, but original in form and content when they 
give life to Roman ideas. — Religion and Art, p. 290. 

It is doubtful whether Greece the perennial en- 
chantress has not wrought as much harm as good 
upon those who fall under her spell. 

IX. The Principate of Hadrian to the Severi 

From the Principate of Hadrian and of Marcus 
Aurelius respectively we have two important reliefs 
representing the Imperial Apotheosis. The first is a 
panel in the Museum of the Capitol with the Apothe- 
osis of the Empress Sabina in presence of the Emperor 
Hadrian. The Diva is borne in her ascension by a 
winged female genius personifying Aeternitas, holding 
in her hand the flaming torch that kindled the fire, 
or else, as seems to me more likely, introduced here 
as symbol of the eternal light {R.R., i. 375, 2=Helbig, 
990).''^ The character of the composition, however, 
is historic rather than religious, the interest is focused 
on the ceremony of the deification and not as yet on 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 89 

the deified personage. The second, the principal 
relief of the basis of the column of Antoninus and 
Faustina, now in the Vatican {R.R., i. 291, i=Helbig, 
123),'^ offers the most grandiose representation of 
the Imperial Apotheosis so far known. On the right 
side appears Roma — note the shifting of the interest 
from the goddess to the divi. She is now spectator, 
and they protagonists. In order further to localise 
the scene, the Campus Martins in person, holding his 
own obelisk on his knees, reclines on the left. Above 
them the Imperial pair, deified as Jupiter and Juno, 
are borne to heaven on the soaring wings of the Aion 
or Spirit of Eternity,'® who here, like Aeternitas on 
the former relief, usurps the function of the eagle as 
vehicle of the Imperial transit, though an eagle with 
outspread wings appears on either side to guard the 
Imperial ascension. The composition as a whole is 
not as yet entirely unified round a central theme. 
The Emperor and Empress turn towards one another, 
but even so the pose tends to be more frontal and 
rigid than on earlier monuments, so that a more 
direct relation is established between the deified pair 
and the spectator. You will, I think, appreciate this 
point if you turn back for a moment to the Augustus 
recumbens of the Grand Camee de France. 

The sculpture of the period of the Antonines shows 
an increasingly strong centralisation. On a slab of 
the Aurelian column, for instance,'^^ we find a com- 



90 



APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 



position which might at first sight pass for a New 
Testament scene by a mediaeval artist, the more so 
that the Emperor raises his right hand in a gesture 
afterwards borrowed for that of Christian benediction. 
The highly centralised design flows from the group 
of Marcus between two officers. They are standing 
on an eminence or platform in the middle of a circular 
camp, the walls of which frame and isolate the Im- 
perial group. Through a gate in the foreground a 
scout rushes into the camp to warn Marcus of ap- 
proaching danger. Who, looking without prejudice 
at this noble central group, resembling Christ between 
two apostles in a fresco by Duccio, can fail to recog- 
nise that new beliefs have invested art with a serious 
emotion unknown to earlier periods, which marks 
off this relief from the many weak contemporary 
imitations of Greek models ? 

But the Greek manner was by no means dead. It, 
too, could receive fresh life by being brought into the 
service of the Emperor. We have an example of its 
superb vitality in the reliefs found in recent years 
in the Roman Library at Ephesus, and now at Vienna 
{R.R., i. 142-5), which represent the Apotheosis of 
Marcus Aurelius, and are well worth studying as a 
Greek rendering of the theme. The scene spreads over 
two slabs. On the first, Selene, the moon, appears 
in her stag-drawn chariot accompanied by the even- 
ing star and heralded by the figure of Night, and drives 



PLATE XL 




O ci 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 91 

into the stream of Ocean, typified by a youth holding 
a rudder. On the second (plate xi.), the chariot 
of the Sun springs heavenward over the familiar 
figure of Terra Mater, who reclines with the children 
at her side. The composition is purely Greek, and 
moves swiftly and equably from end to end without 
any tendency to centralisation. But the new re- 
ligious beliefs attaching to the Emperor pervade the 
scene. He who rides in the solar chariot is not Sol 
Sanctissimus but the Imperator, and Sol acting as 
groom guides his own steeds in their course to the 
starry spheres.^" Like Jupiter Optimus Maximus 
on the arch of Benevento, the Sun has capitulated to 
the Divus Augustus, and passed into his service. 
Ideas are moving swiftly, and we have already got 
beyond the conception of the Apotheosis revealed on 
a papyrus at Giessen,^^ where Apollo announces that 
after taking Trajan up to Heaven in his chariot, he 
now reappears to present Hadrian to the world as 
Trajan's successor. But now the fiery chariot is 
vacated by its own master and filled with the radiancy 
of the new Monarch God. Somehow this visible 
subordination of the Sun to the Emperor, at a period 
when the solar cult was invading the Empire, is more 
striking even than that of Jupiter. That the Imperial 
idea should prove stronger than the moribund cults 
of Graeco-Roman paganism was natural, but that it 
should resist and dominate, as on these reliefs, the 



92 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

victorious march of the Oriental creeds is a proof of 
strength, the effects of which we shall again have 
occasion to observe. 

The portrait reliefs of the Imperial family on the 
little Gate of the Silversmiths in the Velabrum, from 
the principateof Septimius Severus (193-21 1), show the 
new manner of presenting the Imperial personages 
which was becoming current in Rome {R.R., i. 271-2). 
Emperor and Empress no longer turn towards one 
another as on the Antonine basis, here Septimius 
and Julia Domna look straight out of the frame. 
Placed side by side, almost like husband and wife 
in Egyptian art, they seem unaware of each other's 
presence, and are thereby brought into direct relation 
to the spectator. It must not be supposed, however, 
that this new method of treatment at once took the 
place of the old. In a little known relief of the 
Palazzo Sacchetti, which has been interpreted as the 
presentation of Caracalla to the Senate in 197, we 
see a curious combination of the old methods with the 
new {R.R., iii. 319, i). Septimius Severus, accom- 
panied by his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, and 
attended by two of the great officers of State, receives 
a deputation of senators. The processional scheme 
is still Greek, but the massive group of the Emperor 
and his companions has the monumental quality of a 
fresco by Masaccio and superbly expresses the religious 
majesty with which the Emperor was by now invested. 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 93 

The period between Septimius Severus and Dio- 
cletian is comparatively barren of great sculptured 
compositions, owing, doubtless, to political unrest, 
to the frequent changes of emperors and the depres- 
sion caused by repeated military failures. Nor did 
religion just then prove a stimulating factor. The 
great Oriental religions which were predominant in 
Rome during this period found little expression in 
art, partly because of their aniconic principle, partly 
also because artistic effort had been exhausted in 
creating the type of the Emperor. A notable excep- 
tion occurs, however, in a relief in the Forum relating 
to the cult of the black stone of Emesa, which throws 
a curious light on what has already been said of the. 
effacement of Jupiter. On the arch of Benevento 
we saw the Capitoline Jupiter despoil himself of his 
insignia in favour of the Emperor ; soon his paredroi 
Juno and Minerva desert the old god who from the 
Capitoline heights had so long protected Rome, and 
on the relief in question we actually see them guarding 
the recently imported black stone Elagabal brought 
from Syria by the young Emperor Varius Avitus 
Bassianus, better known to history under the name 
which he took from the object of his devotion.^^ The 
composition is a good instance of the monolatric 
scheme of design which so often corresponds to the 
monotheistic idea in religion. 



94 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

X. The Period of Diocletian and Constantine. 
The Christ gradually usurps the place 
of the Emperor as the Central Theme of 
Design 

We are once more struck by the powerlessness of the 
new Oriental cults to mould or inspire new or striking 
art schemes by a carved basis of the period of Dio- 
cletian that lies in the Roman Forum not far from 
the arch of Septimius Severus. It was one of a pair, 
which once stood on either side of the Curia or Senate 
House, and supported columns that respectively bore 
portrait statues of the two Augusti, Diocletian and 
Maxentius, and the two Caesares, Constantine and 
Galerius, each pair grouped perhaps somewhat after 
the fashion of the celebrated porphyry * Tetrarchy ' 
on St. Mark's at Venice. The columns were pre- 
sumably set up in the year 303, to commemorate, as 
the inscription tells us, the anniversaries of the acces- 
sion of Diocletian and his colleagues.^^ One of the 
bases has now disappeared. The second, in honour 
of the Caesars, is now well-known. It was first pub- 
lished by Riegl, who was interested in the technique 
and the curious * black and white ' effect of the relief. 
The subject represented has lately been acutely recog- 
nised by Professor Frothingham — to whom the debt 
of all students of Rome and Roman art increases 
daily — ^as a sacrifice performed by Diocletian in 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 95 

honour of Mithras who had been recently proclaimed 
supreme god of the Empire. But see how little even 
the emotion of a new cult could do for art at this 
time. On the sides, priests and officials are deployed 
in profile according to the time-honoured Hellenic 
method, excepting that the movements are becoming 
crystallised ; on the front face the Emperor, who 
pours a libation at an altar, is surrounded by various 
high officials and faces Mars, no longer the proud god 
who stood in domineering fashion with one foot on 
the step of the altar receiving a sacrifice in his own 
honour, on the basis of Ahenobarbus, but a Mars 
degraded to the position of a mere spectator. For 
the sacrifice is no longer to do honour to one of the 
old Latin or Greek gods. On the right sits the goddess 
Roma, and within the arch of her veil as within his 
own cave nestles the bust of the new god who wears 
the rayed solar nimbus. But instead of facing 
towards him, as we might expect, all the principal 
personages turn their back upon Mithras — and no 
clumsier arrangement could have been devised for 
his introduction into the scene than this of thrusting 
his bust into the angle above the right shoulder of 
the goddess ; it is a direct and naive way of expressing 
the fact that Mithras is now the chief divinity of the 
Empire, and therefore under the direct protection of 
the State personified by Roma, but there the merits 
of the design begin and end. We know, now that 



96 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

Mr. Frothingham has told us so, that the sacrifice is 
for Mithras, but there is nothing in the composition 
to indicate it. In fact, this Diocletianic basis is an 
interesting instance of the failure of the new religious 
conceptions to manifest themselves by means of the 
old traditional forms. It is true that the actual 
scene of the Mithraic sacrifice of the bull was still 
finding grandiose expression in certain of the Mithraic 
altar-pieces, but the type had been created as far back 
as in the Pergamene school ; ^* moreover it was a scene, 
an episode depicted by the means of narrative art. 
To my mind, the solar cults, whether of Mithras or of 
Sol Sanctissimus himself, failed to impress upon art 
a new religious type because, as I have already in- 
dicated, the creative effort was absorbed in giving 
expression to the Imperial figure and his acts. When 
we revert, in fact, to scenes where the Emperor is the 
centre of interest, we are at once aware of a keener 
grasp of the situations to be depicted, and a conse- 
quent greater fulness of Inspiration. Conflicting 
schemes of decoration long subsisted side by side, 
though narrative art was gradually subordinated to 
central motives of design. 

The scene on a lead medallion of the Cabinet des 
Medailles, dating from the Principate of Diocletian, 
shows how matters stood at the beginning of the fourth 
century .^^ The images of the two Emperors, Dio- 
cletian and his colleague, who, with their solar 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 97 

nimbi, resemble two enthroned apostles rather than 
any figures familiar from the antique, are seated 
facing the spectator ; but their heads are turned 
towards the advancing procession of captives, and by 
this movement the Emperors are drawn, as on a 
Greek frieze, within the action of the scene repre- 
sented. I cannot refrain from describing somewhat 
more at length the interesting scenes of the medallion. 
The landscape on the lower half, treated very much 
as on early illuminated manuscripts, indicates the 
locality. The scene is laid at Mayence, the old 
Celtic Moguntiacum ; on the left is the splendid 
old camp city with her great fortifications, and over 
the gate is inscribed the city's name ; the gate leads 
to the famous bridge over the Rhine (inscribed Fl. 
Rhenus) and reaches at the other end the gate of 
another fortified city, the Castellum, the memory of 
which survives in the modern Kastell ; across the 
bridge three Roman Victories escort a tiny captive ; 
in the background of Mayence rise the hills of the 
Taunus, whose wooded slopes are somewhat sparsely 
indicated by a single tree. On the upper tier the 
captives are brought into the Imperial presence, as 
on the Boscoreale cup, by the dethroned Latin Mars ; 
at the foot of the Emperor kneels the conquered pro- 
vince ; on the right is a group of a father with his 
children. All these are traditional motives long 
familiar, but a comparison with the designs of the 

G 



98 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

Boscoreale cup or with the groups on the arch of 
Benevento, shows that the Imperial figure was now 
invested with a hieratic dignity which tends to iso- 
late it from the other personages of the scene, while 
these, on the other hand, are brought by the lines 
of the design into the direct service of the Imperial 
figure. It is the reappearance of the monolatric 
principle. 

With Diocletian we have got back to the period 
of the friezes of the arch of Constantine, which I 
took as the text of this lecture. If we now look at 
these in detail we shall find more in them than mere 
material centralisation. The gestures of the officials 
have been compared to those of the Elders who in 
early mosaics stand in monotonous rows and cast 
down their crowns with the same fixed movements 
before the Lamb of God.®^ The comparison meant 
to be disparaging is, in fact, admirably accurate ; 
in the one case as in the other this monotony arises 
from the deliberate attempt on the part of the artist 
to avoid any movement or gesture that could distract 
attention from the central Personage, and in our 
friezes the very identity of the gestures of the atten- 
dants emphasises the importance of the Emperor, and 
restores to art that monolatric value which had almost 
disappeared under the influence of the Greek spirit. 
It is instructive to compare these friezes with the 
reliefs executed two centuries earlier or more, which 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 99 

adorn the two famous balustrades in the Forum 
known as the Anaglypha Traiani. They date from 
the period of Trajan or, as I believe, from that of 
Domitian, and represent various Imperial bene- 
factions.*^ You at once perceive the different 
aesthetic effect produced by the one and by the other. 
On the earlier relief the various scenes are displayed 
according to the Greek manner with equal distribution 
of interest ; on the later every detail is so massed 
and marshalled as to heighten the importance of the 
central figure. 

From the resemblance of these Diocletianic friezes 
to those on the arch of Galerius at Saloniki, which 
was put up to commemorate the same Persian vic- 
tories, it seems probable that Graeco-Oriental models 
were powerful factors in fixing these centralised 
types of composition ; ** but here or there the inspir- 
ing ideas emanate from the Imperator and his res 
gestae. 

'ifik It is surprising that Riegl, who so clearly understood 
the significance of the technical and optical laws 
observed in these reliefs, should barely comment on 
this new and perfected centralisation ; especially as 
he had recognised the same phenomena in the archi- 
tecture of the period. In the course of time archi- 
tecture had passed from the Hellenic stage, with its 
feeling for the harmony of outward proportion, to 
the Imperial phase, with its feeling for the harmonies 



100 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

of internal spaces,^^ Even as pagan architecture 
had, in the normal course of its development, evolved 
forms which, under the stimulus of new Christian 
ideas, were to enter upon a new phase of life, so 
sculpture had been transformed into a scheme that 
could be naturally adapted to the monotheistic beliefs 
of the religion now triumphing over the Empire. I 
have already pointed out that Greek religious art had 
no place for a single figure of supreme interest, 
claiming to subordinate to itself all the details of the 
composition. Had Christianity, with much of the 
old Judaic horror of images clinging to its monotheism, 
come into direct contact with Greek anthropo- 
morphism, the shock would have been even more 
violent than it was, and the victory of Christianity 
might have brought with it the total extinction of 
the formative arts, or at least of those which represent 
the human figure. As it was, the Imperial idea 
smoothed over the transition ; the place was ready 
and by an almost unconscious change we find the 
Christ enthroned or standing in the place of the 
Imperator. On a beautiful sarcophagus at Verona, 
the noble figures and harmonious composition are 
arranged according to the same principle of design as 
the Diocletianic * Proclamation,' save that the Im- 
perial platform is transformed into the rock whence 
flow the four rivers of Paradise.^*' The Gegenkaiser 
conquered and ousted from its throne the central 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS loi 

figure of the Imperial cult against which the Chris- 
tians had waged so fierce a war, and the legend 
Christus imperat imposed itself upon art as forcibly 
as elsewhere. 

I do not suggest for one moment that the art-type 
of the Christ is derived from that of the Emperor. 
The evolution I am dwelling on is of place alone, 
of position, that is, within a decorative scheme .^^ 
Here again the change was gradual ; the Emperor 
himself yields his place only by slow degrees, and we 
can watch the process of his gradual effacement 
through many centuries. In the grand Barberini 
ivory with the bust of the young Christ in the frieze 
above the middle panel, rightly claimed, I think, for 
the period of Constantine, the Emperor appears in a 
new scheme. I have been derided for holding up this 
ivory to admiration in my book on Roman Sculpture,^^ 
and no doubt our aesthetic sense, trained to the irre- 
proachable contours of Hellenic art, is vexed by the 
constrained and difficult attitude of the horseman ; 
yet we are in the presence of a gallant effort to express 
a new ideal. The world has done with the splendidly 
silhouetted horsemen of the Parthenon, with con- 
ceptions like that embodied in the graceful stele of 
Dexileos in the Athenian Ceramicus ; the aim of art 
is now to restore communion between the worshipper 
and the worshipped, between God and the suppliant 
— to show the Emperor subordinate to the Christ, 



102 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

but to bring both into direct relation to the spectator 
by means of the frontal position. 

A curious panel in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum 
at Berlin exhibits on one side of the group Our 
Lord between the apostles Peter and Paul ; on the 
other Our Lady crowning the young Emperor Leo vi. 
(a.d. 886).^^ The latter scene shows how the Im- 
perial figure in its subordinate position long held its 
own by the side of the God of the new religion and 
his saints. The beautiful design on the leaf of a 
diptych in the Cabinet des Medailles (plate xii., 2) 
represents the central figure of Christian art standing 
on a high platform between a Byzantine Emperor and 
Empress of the eleventh century, upon whose head 
he lays protecting hands.^* Romanus (1068-71) is 
a Byzantine Emperor, but his name and the epithet 
Basileus Romaion show how proudly the old con- 
nection with the Western Empire was cherished ; his 
consort, on the other hand, bears the beautiful Greek 
name of Eudocia, so that they appear almost sym- 
bolic of the forces of East and West swept by now 
into the service of the new religion. The Imperial 
figures will soon vanish altogether, though the scheme 
of the protecting figure and the dependent rulers will 
in time be transformed in the service of new ideas, and 
become the donors and protecting powers familiar 
in pictures of the Renaissance. 



PLATE XII. 



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DIVVS AVGVSTVS 103 

XL From Const antine to Justinian. Persist- 
ence OF Imperial Figure as the Central 
Motive of Design. Summary 

With the introduction of Christian subjects a new 
era had succeeded to the Antique. Art now gradu- 
ally passes, as we have seen, from the service of the 
Emperor and of the res gestae into that of the Christ 
and of Christian subjects. But by the side of these 
new themes the Imperial figure, in the frontal scheme 
won for it by the doctrine of the Imperial Deifica- 
tion, long retained its independence, and we must 
follow its fortunes to the end. 

It is on a monument once more wholly dedicated 
to the glorification of the Emperor — the superb gold 
medallion of Valentinian i. and his brother Valens 
(plate xiii., i) — that the frontal presentment finds 
what seems its most perfect form in Roman Imperial 
art.^^ Were it not for the portrait of Valentinian on 
the obverse with the inscription Gloria Romanorum, 
we might mistake the two majestic figures with the 
nimbus and the orb and raised right hand for the 
Peter and Paul of a pontifical seal. It is Valentinian 
(364-75) again whom we see on the beautiful silver disc 
preserved at Geneva (plate xiii., 2=R.R., iii. 524, 2), 
with the Emperor standing in a central and frontal 
position haranguing his troops.^^ The large solar 
aureole that encircles his head and the labarum in 



104 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

his left hand bring the Imperial figure very near to 
that of the Risen Christ in many works of the Middle 
Ages and the Renaissance. I shall violate chrono- 
logy in order to place before you here the fine ivory 
diptych of Aosta, which shows the Emperor Honorius 
repeated on each leaf, in a pose very similar to 
that of the Valentinian on the Geneva disc. This, 
the earliest consular diptych known, dates from the 
year 406 (plate xii., i).^' 

The basis of Theodosius on the Atmeidan at 

Constantinople shows frontal composition adopted 

for practically all the personages involved in the 

principal scenes.^^ On all four sides the Emperor, 

his family and court, are shown en face within the 

Imperial tribune, while the lower spaces are occupied 

either by performances of dancers and musicians 

arranged in animated groups, or else by groups of 

barbarians bringing offerings {R.R., i. 1 12-13). The 

composition of the main groups betrays the weak side 

of this later Imperial art. The artist by placing all 

the personages in a full-face position tends to cancel 

the significance of the frontal figure in the centre, 

which on the Diocletianic congiarium, for instance, 

was heightened by the monolatric principle of the 

attendant groups. Delia Seta, arguing from his own 

point of view, puts the matter somewhat differently, 

and draws attention to the deteriorating quality of 

the design : 



PLATE XIII. 





1. Valens and Valentinian. Vienna. 

2. Valentinian with his troops. Geneva. 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 105 

The path of decadence is shown ... in the reliefs of 
the base of the column of Theodosius at Constantinople. 
In these last reliefs the action has completely disappeared 
and the figures are only present in the scene. They are 
of course presented completely facing the spectator, so 
that in the scene a sort of inertia and immobility is 
established. — Religion and Art, p. 279. 

On the other hand, the frontal composition of Theo- 
dosius and his two sons, shown enthroned like a triad 
of gods on the grandiose silver disc at Madrid {R.R., 
ii. 195, i), is superbly effective (plate xiv., i).^^ Let 
us analyse it somewhat in detail. Under an arcuated 
pediment Theodosius appears in a purely frontal pose ; 
he wears the diadem and his head is illumined by the 
solar aureole ; he is flanked by his sons Honorius and 
Arcadius, who sit, holding orb and sceptre ; in the 
spaces between the columns, to either side the Im- 
perial guards stand on duty with their long spears 
and huge shields ; while immediately to the left of 
the Emperor, a court prefect, whose inferior rank is 
denoted by his small size, advances to do homage. 
Classic tradition still triumphs in the subordinate 
parts of the design. Within each angle of the pedi- 
ment flits a love-god, and in the exergue the old 
classic Terra Mater, turreted like Cybele the Great 
Mother and holding a large cornucopiae, reclines amid 
the flowers and plants, while children play around 
her or bring her offerings of fruit. She represents 



io6 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

once more the power of the Imperial bounty to bestow 
the gifts of peace and fruitfulness and wealth upon 
the earth and her inhabitants. The idea is the same 
as that which inspired the Augustan cameos or the 
silver disc of Aquileia ; but while in the earlier scene 
the Emperor appears as Mediator, so to speak, 
between Heaven and Earth, the very scheme which 
now clothes the Imperial Majesty announces that 
its power is equal to that of the gods whom it has 
supplanted. The idea of the Imperial beneficence is 
borne out by the design. By the prominent position 
^iven to the Emperor under the arcuated pediment 
which enframes his head, so to speak, like a second 
aureole, he dominates the whole scene, for though 
his sons — partners of their father's majesty — claim 
homage as Imperial personages, their frontal pose, 
owing to their subordinate place and lesser stature, in 
no way detracts from the significance of the central 
figure. The guards likewise, by their close grouping 
and by the slight inward turn of the heads, introduce 
the monolatric quality which enhances the spec- 
tator's interest in the central part of the design. 
Then observe how the solemn stillness of the Imperial 
figure, removed like the Christ of Chartres (plate iv.) 
from conditions of time and space, is further en- 
hanced by the somewhat fussy action of the little 
court prefect as he advances from the left with some 
petition which leaves the Imperial personage undis- 



PLATE X/r. 





1. An Imperial Triad. Theodosius and his Sons. 

Silver Disc in Madrid. 

2. The Marriage of David. Nicosia. 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS 107 

turbed. The Madrid disc, like the medal of Valens 
and Valentinian, shows Roman art — the art inspired 
by the Imperial idea — at a level which it is generally 
supposed was only reached by Christian compositions. 

A proof of the rapid interchange of ideas that took 
place at this time between pagan and Christian art 
is afforded by the subjects from the life of David, 
embossed on a series of nine silver plates from near 
Kyrenia in Cyprus, and partly distributed between 
the Pierpont Morgan collection in New York and the 
Museum of Nicosia. In three of these the background 
is formed by an arcuated construction similar to that 
in the disc of Theodosius, though with the omission 
of the line of the gable ; moreover in the * David 
before Saul,' Saul sits enthroned like Theodosius ; 
while the composition of the Marriage of David has 
been well compared by Mr. Dalton to that of a coin 
of Theodosius 11., showing this Emperor between 
Valentinian iii. and Eudocia (plate xiv,, 2).^°° 

Under the double influence of the Christ and the 
Emperor a central composition was becoming the rule. 
A striking example is afforded by the group of the 
consular chariot on the splendid opus sectile at Rome 
from the Basilica of Junius Bassus, now in the Palazzo 
del Drago.^^^ The scheme of the frontal chariot may 
be traced through art till it becomes the beautiful 
composition of the Ascension of Alexander in his 
griffin-drawn car on a relief of the exterior of St. Mark's 



io8 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

at Venlce.^"^ It is worth comparing with the kindred 
compositions of the chariot Nyx-Selene on an Attic 
cup and of the chariot of HeHos on the phalera from 
EHs which we considered earher in this lecture 
(p. 38). The design of the Alexander is really the 
same in spirit and aim as that of the Helios. Just 
as the Helios, in virtue of his apotropaic function, is 
placed frontally in the design, so, too, Alexander, 
because he is represented as deified, is given the fully 
frontal pose which brings him into direct relation 
to the spectator ; and in each case horses or griffins 
are arranged to each side in a scheme which not only 
does not detract interest from the central figure, but 
actually tends to enhance its importance by imparting 
to the design a monolatric value. But there is this 
difference, that what in Greek art from the fifth cen- 
tury B.C. onwards, only made a sporadic appearance 
with a special purpose in view has now come definitely 
to the surface and become the rule, while the narrative 
scheme and self-involved design of the Selene are 
now the exception, or only survive as traditional 
motives of decoration. 

Another monument of the silversmith's art must 
close what I have to say about the Emperor as central 
figure in design. The group engraved on the grand 
shield or disc found in a tomb in 1891 at Kertsch 
in the Crimea, and preserved in the Hermitage at 
Petrograd, shows an emperor of the sixth century — 



DIWS AVGVSTVS 109 

almost certainly the great Justinian — in the scheme 
known as the Adventus Augusti, the Advent of the 
victorious Emperor. ^°^ The Emperor, in splendid 
panoply ,^°* is riding to the right, preceded by Victory 
holding palm and wreath, and followed by an officer 
of his bodyguard who carries the great round shield 
with the monogram of Christ. The movement is 
deployed in profile, as on a Greek frieze, but see how 
the Emperor's head and shoulders are turned full to 
the front towards the spectator, while the figures on 
either side turn towards him and are interrelated 
within the composition. There could be no finer 
example than this exquisite composition of the weav- 
ing of two opposite methods into a new and distin- 
guished art scheme (plate i., i). The artist brings 
before us an episode, the adventus, and yet so con- 
trives to emphasise the Emperor, by giving a frontal 
turn to his head and bust that Justinian at once draws 
to himself the attention and homage of the spectator. 
With this superb conception before us of the great 
Emperor who is responsible for the Codex Juris 
Civilis, and the Church of the Holy Wisdom, we may 
pause for one moment to sum up the debt of the 
antique to the Imperial figure. 

In the period of Constantine we saw the antique 
accomplish under its influence the last stage of a slow 
artistic evolution. The Imperial figure, by claiming 
for itself the chief place in design, had imposed upon 



no APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

art a frontal principle of centralised composition, 
which, though not unfamiliar to preceding periods, 
was not an integral factor of their decorative schemes. 
Centralisation is thus the last gift of the declining 
antique to the art that was to take its place, and it is 
the peculiar gift of Rome. Only with the prestige 
bestowed by Rome upon the central figure could a 
mere decorative scheme become imbued with mean- 
ing and emotion and take irrevocable hold upon 
mankind as that best suited to clothe the Imperial 
power, which after unifying the whole civilised world, 
had given to it long centuries of peace and prosperity. 
We have seen how the Olympian Pantheon checked 
the development of a great religious art in Greece. 
The same Pantheon when brought over to Rome 
effectively stifled, through the conflicting claims of 
each Olympian, the formation of a great religious 
type that might have corresponded to the mono- 
theism latent in the cult of the Capitoline Jupiter. 
The whole weight of the Imperial Majesty, the fer- 
vour of enthusiasm inspired by the Imperial Idea, the 
belief that the Empire meant both protection and 
prosperity, had to come into play before the Olympians 
could be banished into the twilight that the Imperial 
figure might reign in their stead. Only the image 
of the Roman Emperor as the vivid embodiment of 
the new centralised authority could have compelled 
into his service alike the principle of frontality by 



DIVVS AVGVSTVS in 

which primitive man sought to assure himself the 
direct protection of his gods, and those schemes of 
narrative composition by which the Greeks had striven 
to illustrate the workings of the divine nature. Under 
the influence of this dual conception, the artists 
working for Rome succeeded in fusing into one har- 
monious whole the res gestae of the Roman people 
and the Maiestas of the Roman Emperor. The 
primitive full-face pose of the god and the monolatric 
distribution of the figures attendant upon him, 
purified by the genius of Rome of the old magical 
intention, passed into the service of Christianity, 
and in its wake proved the paramount influence in 
the art of both Middle Ages and Renaissance. 

Delia Seta has lately argued that in the Renaissance 
from the time of Dante art was captured anew by 
the Greek spirit, and again turned to exemplify the 
dealings of God with man by means of the narra- 
tive style {Religion and Art, p. 364). But the secret 
of centralisation and of the monolatric schemes 
which belong to art in the service of a monotheistic 
idea was never lost ; and if in his Paradiso Tinto- 
retto could marshal figures innumerable into the ser- 
vice of a central and dominant motive, this was 
because centuries earlier, the necessity of unifying the 
Emperor and the Imperial deeds in one compre- 
hensive composition had called forth the centralised 
scheme which we have been considering to-day. 



LECTURE II 

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE AFTER LIFE ON LATE 
ROMAN TOMBSTONES 

Animula vagula blandula 
Hospes comesque corporis 
Quae nunc abibis in loca 
Pallidula rigida nudula 
Nee ut soles dabis iocos. 

The Emperor Hadrian to his Soul. 

I. The Subject 

Were all other sources of evidence lacking, a study 
of the monuments which man has set up from time 
immemorial to mark the resting-place of the dead 
would alone suffice to give us the measure of his 
belief in a life beyond the grave. The subject in its 
entirety has never yet been surveyed, though no 
branch of archaeology is at once so fascinating and so 
fertile. To-day it is only a small contribution to the 
vast subject which I can hope to make. My purpose 
is to discuss certain late Roman tombs which throw 
light on the new beliefs in resurrection and immor- 
tality which spread over the Empire in the first three 
centuries of our era, in the wake of the Oriental 
religions. If I read aright, I believe that Roman 

112 



PLATE XV. 





1. Sarcophagus of Haghia Triada. (Detail.) Museum of Candia 

2. Two Scenes of Apotheosis. («) From the Chariot of MonteleSne. 

of Haghia Triada. 



{b) From the Sarcophagus 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 113 

tombstones reveal a spiritual conception of death 
and of the fate of the soul which is far in advance of 
anything taught by any religious system before the 
establishment of Christianity. Secondly, and as 
the necessary corollary of my first proposition, I want 
to make it clear that the symbolic imagery and 
decoration taken over from the Greeks and the 
Graeco-Oriental peoples by the Romans did not sink 
among them, as is often argued, to the level of mere 
ornament, but became on the contrary charged with 
a new significance. Owing to the variety of the 
phenomena represented, I shall limit myself to those 
monuments which reveal more particularly the 
influence of the beliefs underlying the doctrines of 
the Apotheosis and of Mithraic, Orphic and cognate 
cults. I take my examples, as a rule, from the pro- 
vinces rather than from Rome, because the further 
we get from the sophisticated and cosmopolitan art 
of the capital, the more spontaneous is the expression 
of popular belief ; yet even the most elaborate and 
patrician Roman tombs, as we shall have occasion 
to see, betray at times the same spirit of faith and 
hope. In the provinces I shall lay special stress 
on the monuments of Gallia and the lands bordering 
on the Rhine and the Danube, not only because the 
high level of civilisation attained in these regions 
under the Roman rule results in their stelae being 
more artistic than those of the other provinces, but 

H 



114 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

because they seem to reveal a keener interest in 
religious speculation. I have the more material 
reason for the choice in that the funerary monuments 
from the Rhine and Danube were admirably repre- 
sented in the great Exhibition of the Provinces of 
the Roman Empire held in 191 1, where many must 
have realised for the first time the importance of the 
civil and religious art of the Empire in the second and 
third centuries of our era. Again, M. Esperandieu's 
great volumes on Roman Gaul form a Corpus of 
monuments in which we can read as in an open book 
the vast strength of the religious movement which 
inspired the iconography of the Roman Empire. 
But the movement represented by the imagery of 
the later Roman gravestones can scarcely be ap- 
preciated at its right value unless we first glance 
back, however briefly, at its origin and history in 
Greece and in pre- Imperial Rome. I think also that 
this way of approaching our subject may incidentally 
help students to appreciate more clearly the points 
at which the Romans came into contact with the 
Greek world. 

11. The Origin of the Gravestone traced 
TO Fear of the Ghost 

To us moderns — as, indeed, to the more cultured races 
of antiquity — the tombstone has come to have little 
more than a memorial significance. The dominant 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 115 

motive of decoration or epitaph is regret for the 
departed Hfe, coloured more or less vividly by the 
hopes of a life beyond the grave ; and we are apt to 
consider the sepulchral monuments of the past as 
expressive of the sentiments that inspire our own. 
The dolmens of the neolithic period ; the royal 
pyramids of Egypt ; the delicate carvings of Athenian 
stelae ; Etruscan canopi or Roman tombstones ; the 
mausoleum that enshrines the grief of Artemisia ; 
the column that marks the tomb of Trajan, and 
carries up to the sky the imperishable record of the 
Imperial campaigns ; the square pillar tombs of the 
Roman Rhineland ; the sepulchral slabs of our 
mediaeval cathedrals ; the pseudo-classic tombs of 
the eighteenth century, with their pompous epitaphs 
— all the forms that the tombstone has assumed from 
remotest antiquity to our own times represent to us 
as we look back from our own point of vantage, the 
desire to gain, in the face of ineluctable death, some 
assurance of the life to come, or some consolation in 
the retrospect of the life that has been. But these 
ideas are only arrived at by slow degrees ; they 
presuppose an advanced state of culture of which 
primitive man is wholly incapable. We think of the 
tombstone as the last tribute of love and religion ; 
but fear, rather than any of the nobler emotions, 
appears to be the motive for which it is set up by 
primitive man. 



ii6 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

In order to understand the primitive purpose of the 
tombstone, we must bear in mind that every rite of 
inhumation or incineration has its origin in the desire 
to banish effectually a dreaded presence by placing 
it deep under the earth or by reducing it to ashes. 
In other words, it is inspired by fear of the Ghost, of 
the revenant} Even when the corpse is finally dis- 
posed of man's fears are not over, for the breath, 
which he identifies with the principle of life, may 
work harm to the living if it is allowed to roam at 
large. A desperate effort must be made to prevent 
the breath from escaping. The custom of closing 
the mouth of the dead, of placing the hand over 
mouth and nostrils,^ and of closing his eyes — that 
last pathetic service which it is the privilege of his 
nearest and dearest to render — all arise from the 
attempt to prevent the breath from escaping through 
mouth or nostrils or eyes. Still the mischance might 
happen ; the breath or spiritus might give the sur- 
vivors the slip ; so it became necessary to catch this 
detached spirit, and to prevent it from wandering at 
will. Then, just as the mound above the tomb kept 
the body safe in the grave where it had been laid to 
rest, so the rough stone upon the mound was at first 
intended as a trap for the wandering soul, a place it 
might be induced to enter ; in other words, primitive 
man set up his first rough tombstones with a magical 
intention, in order to provide the ghost of the 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 117 

inhabitant of the tomb with a shrine or dwelHng- 
place. This has been so admirably said by Sir 
Arthur Evans in the epoch-making paper on Tree 
and Pillar Cult, that I cannot do better than quote 
what he says : ' The rites by which the medicine men 
of primitive races the world over are able to shut up 
Gods or Spirits in a material object show how easily 
the idea of attracting or compelling . . . spiritual 
occupation must have arisen. A proof of this is 
found in the ideas attaching to the rude stone monu- 
ments placed over graves. These have not merely a 
memorial significance, but are actually a place of in- 
dwelling for the ghosts.' ^ The sequel of the passage 
we shall have occasion to return to. 

The fear of the haunting dead, of the revenant, 
which religion, philosophy, and even science have 
been powerless to eradicate from uncivilised and 
civilised races alike, is the natural counterpart of the 
universal and persistent belief that death does not 
and cannot mean the destruction of existence.* It 
is because mankind is firmly convinced that the dead 
live somewhere and somehow in a life in which the 
living have no part, and over which they have no 
control, that primitive man at once believes in their 
return and fears it ; hence his idea that if the dead 
are buried with due rites they will be appeased and 
give up annoying or disturbing the living.^ The 
ghost has been pictured by Pater as ' a dream that 



ii8 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

lingers a moment ... a flame in the doorway, a 
feather in the wind,' but in its primitive phase it 
wears no halo of romance ; it is a grim and oppres- 
sive fact that has to be disposed of by fair means 
or foul. Among highly cultured peoples this fear 
of the dead is not incompatible with the most 
passionate sorrow for their loss, or with the most 
exalted hopes for their welfare in an ultramundane 
existence. Primitive man, likewise, when once he 
has made sure that the dead will not disturb his own 
peace, will do everything in his power to further 
their interests ; he will not only bring them offer- 
ings in order to placate and keep them quiet, he 
will also furnish their tombs with the counterparts 
of the objects which he conceives to be necessary 
to their welfare in another life, and as the concep- 
tion of a world below the earth grows upon him, he 
will provide the dead with the means of journeying 
to its furthest ends. 

A whimsical pathos attaches to much of the 
elaborate equipment of the grave, so obviously is it 
intended to keep the dead quiet and remote from 
the seats of the living. When we lay aside sentiment 
and face the truth we realise that the actual return 
of the dead to this world has never been courted by 
any religion, and that it is doubtful whether any one 
ever seriously desired it. Primitive man's fear of 
the dead becomes civilised man's recognition of the 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 119 

fact that the great experience separates, and must 
separate, us and them. ' I shall go to him, but he 
shall not return to me.' 

Even when the dead beneath the earth become 
associated with the divine forces of Nature and are 
held to exert an influence on the vegetation that 
springs from the earth, we shall find that, though 
man welcomes and courts the return of vegetation, 
and tries to induce the dead man underground to co« 
operate in the process, he does not court the return 
of the dead himself. He welcomes in the growth of 
vegetation the resurrection of a divine spirit ; he 
trembles before the reappearance on earth of the 
actual dead whom he has known as human beings 
like unto himself. This has been expressed with 
poignant if unconscious irony in the scene of the 
famous sarcophagus of Haghia Triada,^ interpreted 
as the return of the dead in his aspect of spirit of 
vegetation (plate xv. i) : the dead man — conceived of 
as something akin to Dionysus or Osiris — stands out- 
side his own tomb wrapped in a sheath-like garment 
which resembles the swathings of a mummy ; he has 
come, it seems, in response to a thrilling and elaborate 
ritual which is represented in great detail ; but lo ! 
see how afraid they are lest he should be tempted 
to tarry too long. Three men advance towards him : 
one brings the boat in which he is to be invited to 
return whence he came, and two men carry each a 



120 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

calf as provision for the boat, since the journey to 
the next world is a long one.' 

In the same way it may be noted that the fulfilment 
of any hopes of final rebirth and resurrection, how- 
ever ardent, are ever relegated to a distant and in-^ 
definite future. Once the dead are thought of as 
living in their own distant world, their return to earth 
may be admitted, but it must be within certain well- 
defined limits of time and space, as Boni's discovery 
of the Palatine Mundus has lately reminded us.® 
Whether their return be invited for the benefit of the 
living, or permitted in order to appease the supposed 
desire of the dead to revisit their ancient haunts, the 
times when the spirits were allowed to return were 
days of fear and warning. At times, as in cases of 
prophecy, the dead is officially recalled, so that, from his 
larger experience, he may give counsel to the living ^ ; 
but here also his coming is a defined and limited act, 
fraught with fear to the living, who look upon him as 
an object of awe and wonder and dismiss him gladly 
to the other world when his mission is accomplished. 
The return of the dead invariably takes place, as on 
the Haghia Triada sarcophagus, to the accompani- 
ment of mysterious rites. Examples present to 
every one's mind are the calling up of the ghost of 
Samuel by the witch of Endor at the bidding of Saul ; 
the apparition of Darius in the Persae of Aeschylus 
in answer to the incantations of Atossa and her 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 121 

companions ; the tremendous scene of the Odyssey 
in which Ulysses after accompUshing the prescribed 
sacrifices sits by the mouth of Hades awaiting the 
spirit of Theban Teiresias. 

We moderns have not rid ourselves of fear of the 
ghost ; but the modern ghost, unlike his primitive 
prototype, neither desires to haunt the living nor seeks 
to return among them. In some distant sphere he 
dwells beyond recall, or craves for silence and oblivion 
within the grave : 

Call me not back, O Love, when I am dead : 
Call me not back with witchcraft of thy will : 

Far beyond thought my spirit will have fled : — 
Call it not back lest it obey thee still. 

And when, at Fate's behest, I wake at last 
To toil on earth, to laugh, to weep again — 

Dense be the darkness that enshrouds the Past, 
Deep be the draught of Lethe that I drain. ^" 

III. Origin of Sepulchral Imagery 

Like the gravestone or funeral monument itself, 
the imagery of the gravestone has a magical function 
which manifests itself in a great variety of forms. 
Probably the one we first think of is that of the 
funerary statue. Once endow a tombstone with 
animistic vitality, and it becomes subject to endless 
variations and modifications under the influence of 
the beliefs that centre round the dead whose soul 



122 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

the stone is supposed to hold. At first the boundary- 
line between the survivor's conception of the actual 
dead, and of the stone which holds his spirit, is thin 
and elusive. The shrine or prison-house of the dead 
man's ghost may by a very natural interchange of 
ideas be identified with the dead man himself. The 
aniconic grave-stele or pillar, like the aniconic pillar 
of the god, may be subject to an anthropomorphising 
process, and, since the dead, or his soul, is conceived 
as resident within it, the stone may by an easy tran- 
sition be made to assume the visible form of the in- 
habitant of the tomb. At times the transformation 
may be only partial, and, owing to the early associa- 
tion of the dead beneath the earth with the fertilising 
powers of Nature, it may be limited to expressing 
what to the primitive mind were the vital parts of 
the human body. A curious figure in Berlin from 
Sardis represents the double process .^^ On the one 
side we see the sepulchral stone transformed into 
the image of a man ; on the other the organs of 
generation alone are indicated. A curious group of 
pillars at Tamuli in Sardinia is interesting in this 
connection. ^^ Each is roughly carved at the top in 
the semblance of female breasts, and though it is not 
certain that the pillars were placed over graves, they 
stood near one of the big Sardinian tombs known as 
'Tombs of the Giants.' Possibly they were magical 
stones set up to ensure fertility and increase. 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 123 

As sculpture developed, the function of the stele 
might be usurped by a complete statue of the dead, 
at first of the type commonly known as * Apollos,' 
and by the middle of the sixth century these so-called 
Apollos, now happily renamed Kovpoc, were habitu- 
ally set up over the graves of men, and the corre- 
sponding Kopai, over those of women .^^ Even the 
funerary statue in its classic perfection, whether 
treated as portrait or as idealised type, may, in a 
sense, be regarded as preserving, besides its memorial 
significance, a clear reminiscence of the time when 
the dead was conceived of as dwelling within his own 
stele. This, of course, was only one of the many 
ways which account for the existence of the funerary 
statue ; ^^ it is well not to dwell on this point too 
insistently, or I might be accused of trying to revive 
the old theory, now discarded, of the technical evolu- 
tion of the statue from the pillar or the plank-like 
stele.^^ One observation, however, occurs to me 
with regard to the difficulty so many have experienced 
in admitting that a large proportion of these ' Apollos,' 
who are invariably young, who are Kovpoi in the 
fullest sense of the word,^^ were grave statues. Did 
only the young die ? were there no old men and no 
gravestones of old men ? The answer is that whether 
the occupant of the tomb were old or young, he would 
be figured as young, the state of Kovpo'i being that 
coveted for him and by him in an after life. Eternal 



124 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

youth has ever been one of the postulates of eternal 
life, and to give to the funeral statue the lineaments 
of youth was the best way, on the magical principle 
of primitive peoples, of ensuring the perpetual youth 
of the occupant of the tomb. To the Greek, moreover, 
the body of the old was ever a thing of shame, and 
the sight of it is rather quaintly given by Tyrtaeus 
as a reason against old men going into battle : 

Across the bleeding body lies clenched the wrinkled hand, 
A sight to make men sick to see that by the dead shall 

stand 
And naked see the honoured forms. Though every- 
thing in truth 
Beseems the vahant man that wears the happy flower 

of youth, 
The lover meet for ladies' eyes, the wonder of all men, — 
Yet, fallen foremost in the fight, fair is he truly then.* 
{Tyrtaeus, 8, transl. K. A. Esdaile.) 

The gravestone might also assume the shape, or 
be adorned with, the figure of one of the innumerable 
objects conceived as the seats of the soul after it had 

* aiffxpov yap drj tovto fiera TrpoyudxotC' vecivra 

KeiffOai irpoffOe viuiv dvdpa iraXaikrepov, 
•fjSri \evKbv ix^f'''''' i«i'PV "toXiSv re yiveiov, 

Ovfibv airoirvelovr' &\Ki.fiov ev kovItj, 
alficLToevT' aidoia <pi\ats ev x^po'lv ^xpvra — 

alcrxp^ "To-y' 6<f>9a\/j,oii Kal vefiecr-qTov I8e?v — 
Kai x/)6a yvfipwdivra. vioiixt di irdLvr' inioiKev, 

8^p' iparrji V^V^ dyXabv dvSos ?XV' 
dvSpd(ri fiiv drjrjTbs ISe^v, eparbs Si yvvai^lv, 

fwos eiby, KoXbs 5' ev Trpofia.xoL<n Trecrdiv. 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 125 

departed from its human habitation ; the snake and 
the ' soul-bird,' which already appears on the Haghia 
Triada sarcophagus/' and which develops into the 
siren of the Attic grave reliefs, are familiar instances. 
Or again, the various apotropaic or prophylactic 
figures — we might almost call them by the familiar 
name of scarecrows — placed on tombs to ward off 
the evil spirits might, as was indeed commonly the 
case, be translated into stone in order to ensure their 
permanent activity. Sepulchral art early betrays 
two distinct points of view with regard to the after 
life. The one remains concerned with the material 
welfare of the dead in a sub-terrestrial existence ; 
the other, with a more exalted conception of the 
supreme adventure, seeks to provide the dead with 
a vehicle or an escort to an ultramundane abode of 
bliss. Man's various conception of this abode, 
whether he places the habitation of the dead under 
the earth, or beyond its confines, or in some misty 
cloud-world above, depends in the first instance upon 
his method of disposing of the dead.^^ Where in- 
humation is prevalent, the dead are thought of as 
below the earth ; where incineration, fire is conceived 
as purifying and releasing the immortal part, which 
is then borne aloft to the rarer air of some region 
above the world. The different ways in which it was 
conceived the dead might voyage to these distant 
regions were productive of an especially rich imagery. 



126 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

Already on the sarcophagus of Haghia Triada — dating 
from a pre- or proto-Hellenic civiHsation — we beheld 
the dead borne, like Elijah, on a winged chariot 
through the flaming aether ^^; chariots winged and 
unwinged {ad superos and ad inferos), winged steeds, 
boats. Harpies, Sirens, eagles, sea monsters of every 
description, are only a few of the many vehicles of the 
soul's transit.^^ The conception is refined till it 
attains to the exalted symbolism of the liberated soul 
expressed in the group of Ganymede borne aloft by 
the eagle on the monument of the Secundinii (p. 222). 

Again, figures and scenes expressive of beliefs con- 
cerning the future state of the dead when they had 
reached their destination might be carved or painted 
on the stele. Scenes of ultramundane bliss are of 
specially frequent occurrence — always with the same 
magical intention of perpetuating the state desired 
for the dead by giving it a permanent and visible 
form. The scenes of hunting, chariot-racing, and 
revelling are familiar instances — the ' Funeral Ban- 
quet ' which in one form or other is among the 
commonest motives of ancient sepulchral imagery, 
becoming in time the supreme expression of 
Apotheosis.^^ 

The furniture of the tomb, it may be noted in 
passing, partakes in its origin of the same magic 
character. In the beginning, at any rate, the tomb 
is not furnished, as is popularly supposed, with objects 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 127 

known to the dead while yet aHve or beloved by them 
— a late and sentimental notion. The real function 
of these objects, whether the doll of the child or the 
armour of the warrior, is rather to obtain for the dead, 
by a sort of sympathetic magic, the things which may 
induce them to stay in another world. ^^ 

Thus while the grave monument— simple slab or 
elaborate tomb — marks the barrier which separates 
the dead from the living, its imagery and its furniture 
have primarily the function of securing for the living 
immunity from the dead by giving definite and per- 
manent form to advantages and privileges which the 
survivors conceive of as conducive to well-being in 
another life. It cannot be too strongly impressed 
upon students of the antique that this attitude 
towards the dead lies at the root of much ancient 
religion and ritual, and consequently inspires ancient 
art from the earliest times. For the dead, from 
being objects of terror to be scared away and placated 
at any cost, passed as we have seen to being objects 
of awe, and so acquired the character of beings of a 
superior order endowed with superhuman and magical 
powers. In fact, they were divine ; and this concep- 
tion of the dead as daemon or hero governs the for- 
mation of all sepulchral art. The idea is presented to 
us with crude and primitive directness on the early 
Mycenaean and Spartan reliefs, which we shall now 
consider. It is modified to vanishing point in the 



128 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

art of the Attic stelae, through the supposed indiffer- 
ence to a future Hfe introduced, it is said, by the 
Homeric poems. It persists in the lands least touched 
by these influences, till in the Roman Empire, puri- 
fied and modified by the influence of the Oriental 
religions, it inspires the lofty symbolism of the soul's 
destiny which appears on the stelae we are more 
particularly to study here. The magic intention is 
gradually suppressed, or relegated to a subordinate 
role ; with the progress of time, the imagery of the 
tombstone tends to concentrate more and more on the 
adventures of the soul in the other world and to omit 
or minimise the relation of the dead to this. But it 
was long before thought could be thus focussed on 
the more spiritual aspects of the After Life. 

IV. Conceptions of the After Life on 
Mycenaean and Peloponnesian Stelae 

An example of the desire to secure for the dead 
joyful pastimes in the life beyond, by carving repre- 
sentations of these on the gravestone, is afforded by 
the much discussed scenes of hunting and chariot- 
racing on the famous stelae from the circle of graves 
on the Acropolis of Mycenae.^^ These date at latest 
from the tenth century B.C., and are the earliest 
figured stelae found on Greek soil ; they are described 
as follows by Sir Arthur Evans in the passage from 
which I have already quoted : * The stelae of the 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 129 

graves at Mycenae must themselves be regarded as 
baetylic forms of the departed spirits of members of 
the royal house ; and in the reliefs upon them . . . 
we may recognise a compromise between the idea of 
supplying a spirit with an aniconic habitation, and 
that of pictorially delineating it in human form.' ^* 
Who that looks at them, with this explanation in 
mind, can help seeing that because it is the departed 
spirit which is here delineated, the pastime in which 
he is engaged refers to his life beyond the tomb ? 
We have here, in fact, an anticipation of Pindar's 
picture of the joys of the Blessed, who ' in the space 
before their city . . . take their delight in horses and 
games' (see below, p. 140). More directly than any 
others found on the soil of Hellas do these stelae 
enunciate an order of beliefs as to a blessed future 
life, similar to that which inspires the sepulchral 
imagery of the later Roman Empire more than a 
thousand years after. 

The scene in which the living bring offerings of 
drink and food to the dead very early makes its 
appearance on funerary stelae, with the magical 
intention of making the scene doubly effective by 
giving it the permanence of stone. A series of reliefs 
from the neighbourhood of Sparta, for instance, 
shows the dead man enthroned with his wife and 
receiving offerings from the survivors, while he him- 
self holds out the cup for the funerary libation 

I 



130 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

{R.R., ii. 39 ; 376, etc.).^^ The idea that the dead 
are alive within the tomb, or somewhere in the world 
below it, whence they may be recalled, cannot be 
more emphatically expressed than it is here. They 
can emerge and meet the living who come to pro- 
pitiate or placate them ; they are shown as of heroic 
size by comparison with the living who approach 
them ; they are majestically enthroned to indicate 
the superior power with which they are now endowed. 
Moreover, in the more famous and best preserved of 
these reliefs (plate xvi. i, in the museum of Berlin), 
a further idea is introduced, inasmuch as the man is 
represented not only participating in the scene carved 
within the relief, but with head and shoulders facing 
outwards in a stiff frontal attitude, as though the 
sculptor had wished to establish between the dead 
man and his survivors or descendants a relation 
equivalent to that between god and suppliant (above, 
p. 31). The stelae are particularly interesting as 
offering to the spectator a triple vision of the dead : as 
spirits resident in the stele ; as souls dwelling in the 
great snake which rears itself up behind the throne ; ^® 
and as actual human presences whose more majestic 
mien alone differentiates them from ordinary mortals. 
The scene is clearly one of Apotheosis. The fact that 
the dead are shown as participants in a solemn revel, 
that the very cup they drink from has the shape of 
the kantharos of Dionysus, shows that they have 



PLATE XVI. 







O ;■;:. 



o 







SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 131 

been made the equals of the gods and share their 
special joys. The offerings brought by the survivors 
are also worthy of attention. The man carries a 
cock ^'^ and an egg ; ^^ the woman the flower and the 
fruit of the pomegranate,^^ all of them symbolic of 
those powers of fertility and rebirth with which, as 
I have already pointed out, the dead were early as- 
sociated. Students cannot be too earnestly recom- 
mended to master the whole of this series of Spartan 
reliefs, the type of which persists down to the Pheidian 
age, as on one of the Chrysapha reliefs, now at 
Athens (R.R., ii. 366, 2), on which a man, resembling 
in type the magistrates of the Parthenon frieze, feeds 
from a deep kantharos the soul-snake that rears itself 
in front of him.^° These Peloponnesian reliefs had 
an influence which the art of the Attic stelae could 
not entirely suppress. 

V. The Attic Reaction. Character of Attic 
Sepulchral Imagery 

The clear and material conception of an ultra- 
mundane existence of the dead which inspires the 
Mycenaean stelae and the Spartan hero-reliefs is held 
to have vanished from the sepulchral art of historic 
Greece, or more correctly of historic Attica, or to 
survive only as an underground current of which we 
see occasional glimpses in the humbler arts that 
minister to the superstitions of the less educated 



132 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

classes ; so rarely indeed does it exert any influence 
on the major arts that the one or two examples of 
its persistence are often neglected in a rapid survey 
of the subject. A great deal has been written and 
said of late to show that with the Homeric poems a 
new conception of the after life was introduced, which 
was to influence the funerary art of the Greek and 
the Graeco-Roman world until the great reaction 
brought about under the Empire by the intrusion 
into the West of Oriental religions. In Homer the 
dead lead a colourless existence as shadows in a dis- 
tant Hades where their time is spent in futile regrets 
for the past, and he knows of no influence which these 
poor shades can exert over the living.^^ Since these 
shadows or e'iScoXa are banished to the further con- 
fines of the world, whence there is no return, the 
living need have no fear of the haunting ghost when 
once the dead have been laid to rest, nor do the ghosts 
need to be placated with offerings. If the dead are 
to live for the living it is in the verse of the poet. 
Henceforward, therefore, by the power of art, the 
dead cease to be terror-inspiring spirits and become 
ideals for the guidance of mankind. In a sense, 
therefore, Homer is the creator of the art-type which, 
in Attica at least, after the official introduction of 
Homer by Pisistratus, is to commemorate the dead.^^ 
The sepulchral imagery of classical Athens is likewise 
commemorative in character ; the deceased survives 



PLATE XVII. 








^ ^t^v! l h-HflM ' ^IAi.KJ<SS. ^ " j 




I. Stele of Lyseas. 
Athens. 



2. Stele of Archippos. 
Cook Coll. , Richmond. 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 133 

only as a memory in virtue of his past state, or of his 
past actions. The long series of Athenian funerary 
stelae usually exhibits an episode from the past life 
of the deceased, or some scene illustrative of his con- 
dition in this world. An archaic stele from Velani- 
dezza, signed by Aristocles, represents the dead man 
in full armour standing quietly in profile, with no sug- 
gestion, therefore, of any heroisation {R.R., ii. 373, 2). 
On another of more recent date, in the Vatican, a 
young athlete looks down at his little servant {R.R., 
iii. 408, 4=Helbig, 246). On a stele at Athens a 
youth with his pet rabbit in his hand, and his little 
servant looking up into his master's face, is repre- 
sented in the attitude which doubtless seemed char- 
acteristic to those who survived him (Stele of Telesias, 
R.R., ii. 387, 3). Hegeso likewise, who died in the 
bloom of youth and beauty, is shown seated and 
receiving from her maid a box of jewels {R.R., ii. 
393> i) ; or a young warrior is commemorated, as on 
the stele of Dexileos, by the episode in which he lost 
his life {R.R., ii. 420, 2). A number of these reliefs 
likewise refer to the dead man's trade or profession, 
such as that of the shoemaker Xanthippos (British 
Museum ; R.R., ii. 502, i),^^ or of Sosinos, who 
appears to have been a worker in bronze (Louvre ; 
R.R., ii. 290, 2),^* and those of|various actors and 
poets.^^ Further, in studying the Attic stelae in their 
historical sequence, a distinct change as regards the 



134 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

relation of the dead to the Hving may be observed. 
In the earlier examples the interest still completely 
centres round the dead man, who is represented alone ; 
then we watch the gradual intrusion of the living till 
in the stelae of the fourth century the interest is about 
equally balanced between the dead and those who 
survived him.^^ We may even go so far as to say that 
the spectator's sympathy is claimed rather for the 
sorrow of the survivors than for the fate of the dead. 
Thus by the influence which the Homeric poems 
exerted upon the Attic genius the old magical purpose 
had vanished from the stele and its imagery. 

{a) Traces of Beliefs in an After Life in certain 
Attic Stelae 

All this is not so much my own theory as a fair 
statement, I believe, of the views now currently held 
of Attic sepulchral art.^' They require modifying in 
not a few important particulars. Professor Gardner 
had already pointed out in his Sculptured Tombs of 
Hellas ^^ that Attic stelae retain considerable traces 
of beliefs identical with those which inspired the 
Spartan tombstones. In the archaic period, indeed, 
the Athenian funerary reliefs are permeated by that 
primitive faith in an ultramundane existence which 
continues in force in the sepulchral art of Hellenised 
Asia Minor and its islands. Consider, for instance, the 
beautiful painted stele of Lyseas in Athens (plate 



PLATE XV III. 





^.V^\ 



S o 
H 




SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 135 

xvii. i), where the dead man is seen holding a deep 
drinking-cup, not in the least as some have supposed 
because he had been a priest of Dionysus, but because 
the Dionysiac kantharos is given him, as to the heroised 
Spartan ancestors, for a sign that he has attained to 
the status of god. Then again, the galloping horse- 
man on the socle of this stele seems in the spirit of 
the Mycenaean stelae, and refers to after- wo rid joys 
rather than to the man's racing triumphs in this life.^^ 
Symbols such as we saw in the Spartan stelae, and shall 
see again in Hellenistic and Roman times, are by no 
means of rare occurrence on Attic grave imagery. 
On the stele of a hoplite at Athens, for instance, which 
must be earlier than 478 B.C., since it was found in 
the wall of Themistocles, a running Gorgon is carved 
on the socle with evident prophylactic intention 
{R.R., ii. 373, i).*° On another of the Pheidian 
period from the Peiraeus, a man lays his hand on the 
head of a tiny siren on his left, while on the socle 
Tritons shouldering their oars and blowing their horns 
are depicted, in clear allusion to the journey to the 
Isles of the Blessed {R.R., ii. 388, 4). On the stele, 
inscribed with the name Eutamia, likewise of the 
fifth century, the dog which appears alone on the ledge 
above the figures of Eutamia and her daughter or 
attendant {R.R., ii. 389, 2) is plainly more than a 
household pet ; the place assigned to it is that given 
to the horse on one of the Chrysapha reliefs, and the 



136 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

dog here is certainly the underworld guardian.*^ The 
same may be said of the dog which not unfrequently 
appears seated under the chair of the deceased, as 
in a lovely relief in the museum of the monas- 
tery of Grottaferrata (plate xvi. 2). The bird, very 
commonly a dove, so frequently interpreted as a mere 
gift to the dead, is in its origin quite certainly a seat 
of the departed spirit, and to my mind probably 
retains to the last an allusion to the soul-bird.*^ 
The lion which appears as the guardian of tombs in 
Phrygia from remote antiquity,*^ and the bull who 
later plays so significant a part in the sepulchral 
imagery of the Empire, are all known to the art of 
Attic tomb reliefs, though there is an undeniable 
tendency to keep their symbolic value in the back- 
ground of interest, and to assign to them a value which 
as time goes on becomes more and more decorative.** 
Finally, we must note a mingling of contradictory 
ideas in Attic sepulchral imagery : on a stele of the 
Dipylon {R.R., ii. 392, 3), for instance, Pamphile and 
Demetria, for all the * modern ' everyday character 
of their poses and draperies, are enshrined as solemn 
presences within a nmskos or chapel, in a manner 
reminiscent of those archaic stelae where the dead 
are presented as objects of homage and worship. 
Again, the stelae where the dead are seen surrounded 
by survivors, recall that earlier conception of the 
dead as a god, enthroned and reverently approached 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 137 

by the survivors. But the magical value of the scene 
has vanished, leaving us with what represents an 
episode of daily life, in which, as I have already 
pointed out, the interest often centres about the 
anguish of the living rather than about the fate of 
the dead now passed beyond recall. 

(b) After Life Beliefs in Attic Vase Pictures 

From the first the humble products of the potter's 
art are more explicit than the gravestones. No 
figured stelae adorned the early graves outside the 
Dipylon Gate at Athens, but their place appears to 
have been taken by the vases of geometric style 
found above the tombs and richly decorated with 
various scenes pertaining to death and burial.*^ 
Among them the elaborate picture of a funeral ** 
calls for special mention here, for we do not find 
processions depicted on so extensive a scale or with 
such a pomp of mourners and display of grief, until 
we come to Roman times ; and even then they are 
restricted to few examples (p. 175). A funeral pro- 
cession has no necessary reference to belief in an After 
Life, but the vase shows on the part of the ancient 
inhabitants of Athens a preoccupation with death 
which was banished out of sight by their descendants. 
The funeral is a comparatively rare subject on later 
vases ; but we find the laying out of the corpse, the 
lowering of the coffin, the passage in Charon's boat, 



138 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

and, above all, the offerings by survivors at the tomb. 
The subjects are specially common on the class of 
vases with paintings on white ground, known as 
lekythi, exclusively made for the service of the tomb, 
and justly ranking among the most exquisite pictures 
that Greek art has left us. One in the splendid 
vase collection of the museum of Boston displays a 
scene of appealing beauty : on the left a mourner 
half kneels on the steps of the grave ; the fully 
draped figure of a man on the other side is probably 
intended for the dead himself ; from the figures of 
athletes which decorate the stele, it has been thought 
that the grave was that of a young athlete. It seems 
to me quite as probable that the figures carry the 
usual allusion to the joys and pastimes of an After 
Life*^ (plate xviii.). 

(c) General Trend of Attic Thought with regard to 
Death 

The sepulchral art of Attica was not, as we have 
just seen, so devoid of all reference to a future exist- 
ence as many archaeologists have represented. At the 
same time it has to be admitted that when we survey 
the gravestones of Athens as a whole and mark the 
overwhelming number that contain no reference 
whatsoever save only to the past life of the dead, we 
may say of Attic grave reliefs as a whole, with Ales- 
sandro della Seta, that they do not represent death. 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 139 

hut immortalise life. A human melancholy not un- 
naturally pervades them, a tender regret for what 
has been and is no more, but we look in vain for any 
indication of the recompense that may await the dead 
beyond the grave. So, too, the funeral speech over 
those who fell in the first year of the Peloponnesian 
War, put into the mouth of Pericles by Thucydides, 
has no word about the reward in after life for bravery, 
nor does the speaker attempt to console the survivors 
by the suggestion of future reunion.^^ 

In this art of the Attic stelae we find everywhere 
the frank acceptance of the impenetrable mystery of 
death ; no effort is made to lift the veil that separates 
the now from the hereafter. It seems worth calling 
attention to the fact, not, I think, observed so far, 
that the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul, promulgated in Athens in the fourth century, 
has left no traces in the grave reliefs of the period. 
It is stranger still that the Orphic doctrines, with 
their theory of a future life, which had come into 
vogue two centuries earlier, and which now, in its 
purer Pythagorean form, gave a new turn to the 
mysticism of Plato,*^ practically found no expres- 
sion on sepulchral reliefs before the days of the 
Roman Empire.^*' Yet the influence attributed to 
the Homeric poems, if paramount in Athens, was not 
universal, and Pindar — a mere Boeotian to be sure — 
was possessed of a definite vision of the After Life 



140 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

and its joys which he takes more than one occasion 
to dwell upon. One remarkable passage — the noble 
fragment already referred to, beginning Tolat Xafjuirei 
/ji€v a-devoq aeXtov^^ — I cannot resist quoting here, in 
Andrew Lang's beautiful translation : 

Now the light of the Sun, in the night of the Earth, on 

the souls of the True, 
Shines, and their city is girt with the meadow where 

reigneth the rose ; 
And deep is the shade of the woods, and the wind that 

flits o'er them and through 
Sings of the sea, and is sweet from the isles where the 

frankincense blows : 
Green is their garden and orchard, with rare fruits golden 

it glows, 
And the souls of the Blessed are glad in the pleasures 

on Earth that they knew. 
And in chariots these have delight, and in dice and in 

minstrelsy those. 

And the savour of sacrifice clings to the altars and rises 

anew. * 

{Rhymes a la Mode, ed. 2, p. 119.) 

* Toi<n XdfjLirei 

nip (rdivos deXlov rdv 
ivOdSe vtJKTa Acdrw, (f>OL- 
viKopodoLS 5' ivl Xet/tw- 
veffffi irpodcrTLOP avruv 
Kat Xi^dvip (TKiapov /cat 
Xpvff^ois Kupirots /3e| 



Kat Toi fiev iTTTTOLffi <T€> yv- 
fwaclais <T£>, Toi Si irecraois, 

Toi 5e (popfjilyyeffffi ripirov- 
Tot, irapd 5^ (X^iitlv evav — 
dTjs liTras riBaXev SX^os' 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 141 

The vision endured, for we meet it again in Vergil five 
centuries later — with this great difference, that the 
Latin poet definitely makes Orpheus, the long-robed 
priest, its central figure. 

But the Orphism which inspired the eschatology 
of Pindar and of Plato long failed to affect the attitude 
of the educated Greek towards a future state. How- 
ever expressed — whether in literature or art — this 
attitude remains one of imperturbable resignation. 
The influences emanating from Attica, clothed in the 
matchless Attic form, permeated the whole ancient 
world, moulded the scepticism fashionable in the 
philhellene circles of Republican Rome, and every- 
where opposed an obstinate resistance to the beliefs 
in an ultramundane existence which were to conquer 
in the end. Before we return to the monuments, 
allow me, as a contrast to Pindar, one more quotation 
in illustration of my meaning. It is from the elegy 
on the death of Bion, long attributed to Moschus, 
but now recognised as the work of an Italo-Greek 
poet of the age of SuUa.^^ The passage alal toI /xa- 
Xd^ai, familiar from Leigh Hunt's charming version, 

Alas, when mallows in the garden die. 
Green parsley, or the crisp luxuriant dill. 
They live again and flower another year ; 

65^0. 5' iparbv Kara, xdpov Kidvarai. 
aid — 6va /j.eiyv6v- 

T(j)v irvpl T7]\e(pavei trav- 

Toca deuv iirl ^wfjLoti. 



142 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

But we, how great soe'er, or strong, or wise, 
When once we die, sleep in the silent earth 
A long, unending, unawakeable sleep, * 

shows how completely the educated Graeco-Roman 
world of the first century had lost — or affected to 
have lost — the very conception of a life beyond the 
grave. While humble worshippers in Asia Minor 
were drawing consolation from the rites of Adonis, 
Cybele, and Attis, and perceiving in the yearly resur- 
rection of the spring a parallel and a hope for their 
own future life, the Greek saw in that same yearly 
miracle only a contrast between the unchanging 
and eternal processes of Nature and the inevitable 
hour that awaits mankind at the last. 

VI. The Sepulchral Imagery of Asia Minor 

(a) General Character 

Fortunately for the greater happiness and consola- 
tion of mankind there were other Greek countries 
where belief as to an After Life was never so completely 
obscured as in Attica, and where it continued to find 
direct expression in art. The Attic stelae practically 
came to an end between 317-307 B.C., as a consequence 

* aial, rat /iaXdxai fiev, iirav Kara kSlwov 6\o}VTai, 
rjSk TO, x^w/ja ffiXiva to t' eiidaXh odXov S.v7)6ov 
ijffTepov aB ^wovtl /cat els ^ros &\Xo <pvovri' 
&Hfies 5' oi fieydXoi Kal Kaprepoi, oi ffocpol dvdpei, 
owbTe vpara 6dvu3nes, dvdKOOL iv x^ovl KoiXai 
eiidofies ed /xAXa fji,aKpbv dripixova vriyperov vvvov. 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 143 

of the sumptuary laws passed by Demetrius of 
Phaleron against the excessive luxury of sepulchral 
monuments. After that period the use of any 
elaborate tomb imagery seems to have been effectively 
checked. For the most part the graves are now 
marked by simple pillars or slabs ; practically the only 
subject which we find carved on these later Attic 
gravestones being the funeral banquet, or rather, as 
we should call it, the ' Banquet of the Apotheosis.' 
The subject was of rare occurrence in the great period 
of Attic art, and its new frequency betokens a revival 
of faith in the glorified condition of the dead — a fact 
which it may some day be possible to explain by 
reference to the predominance at this time of Pytha- 
gorean Orphism. 

From the close of the fourth century we have to turn 
to the stelae of Asia Minor for the later history of the 
grave-relief. It is usually held that the Asiatic stelae 
derive from the Attic. This is true of their archi- 
tectural forms as a whole, but only very partially 
so of the subjects represented. Rather does their 
elaborate symbolism derive in an unbroken line from 
those more primitive customs and beliefs which we 
have seen rejected by Attica and Athens under the 
influence of the Homeric poems. A glance at the 
imagery of the earlier tombs and other sepulchral 
monuments of Asia Minor and the neighbouring 
islands soon makes this clear. 



144 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

(b) Scenes of Apotheosis and After Life on Sarcophagi 
from Cyprus and from Clazomenae. The Chariot 
of Monteleone 

First we will select from the Metropolitan Museum 
of New York the sarcophagus from Golgoi in Cyprus, 
recently published by Professor Myres of Oxford,^^ 
to whose catalogue of the Cypriote monuments in 
New -York we are all looking forward. The scenes 
of hunting and of chariot-racing embody, as do the 
reliefs of the Mycenaean tombs, the promise of noble 
pastimes in a life to come ; the spirit is that of the 
Pindaric description of ultramundane bliss. The 
banquet scene combines the sacramental expression 
of the rewards and joys awaiting the Blest with the 
notion of Apotheosis ; while the figure of Perseus 
running with the head of the Gorgon is quite certainly, 
to my mind, figured here with apotropaic intention, 
to ward off evil spirits from the occupants of tomb 
and sarcophagus.^* We shall find the same prophy- 
lactic character attaching to this image some eight 
hundred years later on the tomb of the Secundinii at 
Igel near Treves (p. 222). Whether we can follow 
an earlier interpreter of this sarcophagus in seeing in 
the Perseus a portrait of the deceased,^^ thought of 
therefore as deified, I am not at present prepared to 
say, though there is little doubt that in the Hellenised 
East there was a tendency to regard the dead as a 



PLATE XIX. 




< ^ 

I 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 145 

being of a superior order, which led soon to his Apothe- 
osis in the form of various heroes and gods. This 
is a further point which distinguishes the funerary 
art of Asia Minor from that of Hellas. 

The celebrated sarcophagi from Clazomenae in 
Lydia, which come well within the circle of Ionian 
influence,^^ exhibit, in the paintings of the interior, 
hunting and warlike scenes similar to those on the 
example from Golgoi and a number of apotropaic 
motives, the most striking of which is that of the 
young man holding a cock in each hand and with two 
dogs fawning upon him. Both cock and dogs render 
here the service of warding off evil spirits from the 
wayfarer to the underworld, while a degree of Apothe- 
osis is implied by showing the young man as master 
of the hounds.^' I wish we had time to discuss the 
wonderful friezes which decorate the interior, upper 
rims, and lid of the sarcophagus in the British Museum, 
and seem like a pictorial commentary on Pindar's 
visions of a Blessed After Life (plate xix.). Along the 
rim and on the end panels are figured the exploits 
which win for the dead man participation in the noble 
pastimes which make up the rest of the figured decora- 
tion. I must dwell one moment on the winged 
figures — some bearing branches — which hover above 
the chariots on the lid. They are the same K^pe?^^ 
— Greek Angels of Death we may call them — who are 
figured in battle-scenes on early red-figured Attic 

K 



146 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

vases, hovering above the dead and dying warriors, 
as in an incomparably beautiful fragment now 
at Palermo.^^ The dread Krjp ©avdroio, the cruel 
vampire who sucked the blood of the brave, has 
another side to its nature ; it can also close the eyes 
of the hero in battle, and bear away his soul to the 
radiant spaces. The K-^p is thus a conception akin 
to one aspect of the Siren, with whom it appears 
alternately above the reclining revellers on a lovely 
kylix from Cyrene in the Louvre, justly interpreted 
as a Banquet of the Blessed — a avfjiTrocrtov rwv oaiav.^^ 
In the same way the scene on the sarcophagus is a 
joust of the Blessed, and over them, as over the 
revellers of the Cyrenean cup, hover the K?7/369 as 
ministrant spirits. 

The lion, likewise, continually appears on this class 
of sarcophagi and on the tombs of Asia Minor, an 
important fact for us, since the lion is one of the most 
frequent of sepulchral emblems on the tombs and 
gravestones of Rome, and, as we shall see, on those of 
Roman Gaul, Britain, and the Roman provinces of 
Central Europe. The presence of the lion on the 
tombs of Asia Minor has been explained by his con- 
nection with Cybele as protectress of graves, for 
Cybele in her aspect of mother-goddess of the earth's 
fertility is by an easy transition of thought connected 
with the underworld whence vegetation springs, and 
so with the dead, while the lion as the highest expres- 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 147 

sion of the vital forces of Nature early appears as her 
companion. ^1 Probably several conceptions unite in 
the symbolism of the lion, and we shall also be able 
to recognise in him the emblem of the solar forces that 
destroy the flesh and so liberate the soul. The transit 
of the dead to the upper spheres again is depicted 
on the magnificent bronze chariot of Monteleone, 
no doubt part of the furniture of a tomb, which like 
the sarcophagus of Golgoi is now among the treasures 
of the New York Metropolitan Museum. It may be 
dated in the early part of the sixth century, and 
though found in Umbria, is certainly Ionian work.*^^ 
On the front panel we see a gallant exploit of the dead 
warrior, while the reward of his prowess appears on 
the panel of one side, where we see him borne upwards 
in the winged chariot over the recumbent figure of 
Mother Earth (plate xv. 2(a)) ; the chariots in early 
times were generally winged, being a usual vehicle 
of the soul's transit to heaven.®^ We have twice 
met with this scheme before, once on the sarco- 
phagus of Haghia Triada, to which, however, I made 
only passing allusion (plate xv. 2(b)), and again on 
the relief from Ephesus where the Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius ascends heavenward in the chariot of the 
Sun over the recumbent Earth (plate xi.) ; in all 
three cases the scene is one of Apotheosis, and in all 
three the soul is caught up, so to speak, in a mystic 
chariot, like Heracles and Elijah. 



148 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

(c) Sepulchral Imagery of Lycia 

The tombs of Lycia, which very early betray in the 
character of their art the influence of Ionia, are 
specially instructive for the force of the belief in an 
After Life which inspire their imagery. Let us run 
rapidly through the splendid examples preserved in 
the British Museum. The Harpy Tomb is, of course, 
the classic example. It dates from the end of the 
sixth or beginning of the fifth century, when in Athens 
stelae of the type recording the everyday life of the 
deceased (p. 133) were already in vogue ; from its 
manifold subjects it seems to have been the burial- 
place of several generations of the same family. A 
happy reaction has set in lately against the perverted 
notion that saw in the carvings of its four sides mere 
genre scenes from everyday life ; they are obviously 
in the same line of belief and of thought as the Spartan 
gravestones.^* The friezes of all four sides reveal an 
elaborate ritual of the grave, combined with scenes 
of Apotheosis and of ultramundane existence {R.R., i. 
470-1). The pictorial expression of the Soul's ad- 
venture is as varied here as on the sarcophagus from 
Haghia Triada : winged female figures, who partake 
both of the nature of the Harpies, or body-snatchers, 
and of a vehicle of Apotheosis, tenderly bear away the 
souls ; between them a warrior offers his armour to 
a god of the underworld, who is doubtless a heroised 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 149 

ancestor ; another of these underworld divinities 
receives the offering of a dove ; while on the entrance 
side two gracious women, mother and daughter per- 
haps, seated outside their own tomb, receive the 
offering of their living female descendants, who 
approach with no less stately a mien than the Athenian 
maidens on the frieze of the Parthenon. On the 
corresponding relief at the back we see a third male 
ancestor between two groups of women receiving, 
like the Spartan heroised ancestors, the offering of an 
egg and a cock. Outside Christian art it would be 
difficult to match these moving and poetic scenes. 
The rape of the soul by the Harpies has, in fact, a 
remarkable parallel on a scene carved in the portal 
of S. Trophime at Aries, where an angel advances 
from the left with a soul in his hand into the presence 
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are seen seated 
in Paradise, each already holding two souls in his 
lap, in vivid illustration of the New Testament 
phrase, ' Abraham's bosom.' The analogy may be 
something more than a mere coincidence, since two 
other reliefs from S. Trophime offer curious analogies 
to two famous Greek works recently claimed as 
Ionian : the scene where the soul of a martyred saint 
as it leaves his body is lifted by bending angels into 
the presence of God, and that in which a great winged 
angel, placed frontally, weighs the souls in the scales ; 
both recall the so-called 'Nativity of Aphrodite' 



150 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

of the Ludovisi Throne, and the ' Weighing of the 
Souls ' of its supposed counterpart at Boston.^^ It 
would be strange indeed if the central Ludovisi scene, 
so long associated with theories of physical birth, 
should in fact be connected with the spiritual rebirth ; 
stranger still if the Christian subjects of a mediaeval 
church should be the means of throwing light on the 
mystery still attaching to the subjects of the * thrones,' 
but to discuss this interesting parallel further would 
take us too far afield.®^ 

This Lycian sepulchral art is a rich mine of infor- 
mation which would repay working out in great 
detail. I must be content here to give a few 
indications. A beautiful and pathetic relief in the 
British Museum shows a funerary column, on which 
the apotropaic Siren stands with extended wings ; 
on either side sit the dead ancestors, who here, as on 
the Spartan reliefs, are conceived both as spirits resi- 
dent within the stele and also in their human shape.^' 
The relief is, moreover, one of the most exquisite com- 
positions left us by Greek art (plate xx.), and shows 
what might have been accomplished by the lonians 
in the way of centralised monolatric design, had not 
their inspiration been diverted into other channels by 
the influence of the Attic schools with their Homeric 
mythology. Funeral scenes, on the same grand scale 
as on the sarcophagus from Golgoi, are also very 
frequent {R.R., i. 469, i, 2). The funeral procession. 



PLATE XX. 




5 ^ 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 151 

though not unknown to Attic art, remains character- 
istic of Ionian, or more probably Graeco-Asiatic art, 
whence it may have influenced that of early Latium. 
(below, p. 168). At a later date a splendid example 
occurs on the long sides of the lid of the Sarcophagus 
of the Mourners from Sidon {R.R., i. 406). The 
Lycian tombs also frequently exhibit the motive of 
the guardian lions. An impressive tomb in the British 
Museum {R.R., i. 466-7), from the acropolis of Xanthos, 
is cut in one block and adorned on the south side with 
a lion holding the head of a bull between its paws, and 
on the opposite by a lioness and her cub ; while on 
the west side to the right of the door a warrior appears 
in contest with a lion which faces him erect ^^ (Catalogue 
of Sculpture, No. 80). I have already referred to the 
probable meaning of the lion as guardian of the 
tomb ; the group of the lion devouring a bull or other 
animal so common in Eastern and Graeco-Oriental art, 
which afterwards acquires a definite mystical inten- 
tion on the tombs of the Roman Empire, represents, 
I believe, from the beginning the notion of a power 
of light devouring the terrestrial body, since the lion 
early appears as emblem of the sun.^^ Other familiar 
motives are the Sirens and lions placed heraldically 
on the panels of the doors on the gable ends of a 
certain type of Lycian tomb {R.R., i. 469, 4). 

All the sepulchral art of Lycia is strongly influenced 
by Ionia, and later came under the overwhelming 



152 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

influence of Attica, but even then the forms in which 
belief in the After Life has found expression were never 
entirely obliterated. The superimposed friezes which 
adorn in typical fashion the inner face of the walls 
of the Heroon at Gjolbaschi-Trysa proclaim the belief 
in a logical and sustained form (R.R., i, 443-64). 
Probably the tomb was destined for various members 
of one family whose exploits, thrown into a succession 
of legendary forms, already point to a degree of 
Apotheosis. There followed long banqueting scenes, 
at which recline those who, released by death from 
their earthly labours, have attained a blessed life, 
while on the left of the entrance we see the act of 
Apotheosis pictured, as it constantly is in Lycia, by 
the ascension of the hero in a chariot.'" Such, of 
course, is the meaning of the chariots, so far always 
inadequately explained, carved on each side of the 
roof of the Lycian tombs of Payava and Merehi, in 
the British Museum {R.R., i. 487-8), '^ wonderful 
monuments which deserve closer study than has 
yet been accorded to them. The same chariots of 
Apotheosis occur on the tomb of Deirmis and Aes- 
chylus at Vienna, which stood just outside the 
Heroon at Gjolbaschi.'^ Such also is the meaning of 
the chariot, whether empty or containing the statues 
of Mausolus and his consort, that crowned the 
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, where, moreover, the 
chariot races on one frieze of the great podium 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 153 

continue the tradition of the scenes on the sarcophagi 
of Cyprus and of Clazomenae. 

Lycian art recognised various other vehicles of 
the soul's ultramundane journey. The Nereids, for 
instance, of the slightly earlier monument from 
Xanthos, what are they but souls borne to another 
sphere by the marine monsters which we see beneath 
the feet of the gracious maidens ? These are the 
same creatures of the deep that escort the soul on 
countless Roman tombs. This so-called Nereid 
monument is of especial interest as combining in the 
manner of the later Roman tombs of the Rhineland 
the commemoration of the deeds of the dead while 
yet alive, with a representation of the funeral cere- 
monies and the imagery symbolic of the destinies 
of the soul — another example of the influence which 
Hellenised Asia was constantly to exercise on Rome. 
The arrangement of the figures in the pediment 
{R.R., i, 486), it may be noted in passing, seems 
directly derived from that of the ancestors who face 
one another on each side of the pillar in the Siren 
tomb from Xanthos'^ (plate xx.). 

(d) Chios. The Sarcophagi of Sidon. Character 
of Ionian Art 

The whole of Graeco-Asiatic sepulchral art bears 
witness to similar ideas of ascension or Apotheosis, 
and of eternal bliss in later times also. At Chios, for 



154 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

instance, in the fourth century, we find the motives 
of the Clazomenae sarcophagi repeated on the marble 
slab of one Metrodoros "^^ (now in Berlin) , as well as a 
number of tombs adorned with the figures of Sirens, 
assuredly not, as the learned assert, because the dead 
man had musical tastes, but as token of his soul's 
survival, and also probably to guard his tomb from 
evil influences. If we pass to Hellenised S^^ria we 
meet with the same or similar beliefs and traditions. 
On the sarcophagus of the Satrap from Sidon {R.R., i. 
411, 2, 413), we have the banquet scene, in the sar- 
cophagus aptly surnamed ' Lycian ' {R.R., i. 409-11, 
i) — since though found in the royal necropolis of 
Sidon it has all the characteristics noted above in 
Lycian sepulchral art — we find the apotropaic Siren, 
the grifiins, vehicles of the soul's transit ; the frontal 
guardian lions on the sides of the lid and on the friezes 
of the case, a weakened ' mythologised ' version of 
the triumphal chariot of the soul.'^ On the sar- 
cophagus of the ' Mourners ' the scene of hunting 
and the funeral pageant reappear, and on the pedi- 
ments what is usually taken for a group of women in 
Hades or El^-sium {R.R., i. 404-8). In this context 
I should like to call your attention to an exquisite 
pedimental relief, to my mind undoubtedly Ionian, 
formerly in a private collection at Munich, in which 
its first interpreter saw the introduction of a dead 
woman by Hermes to the Underworld where other 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 155 

women are seen sitting and mourning in the Elysian 
fields {R.R., i. 42).'^ You must keep in mind the 
persistence of these views of a blessed future exist- 
ence among the races most strongly influenced by the 
intellectual lonians, that highly gifted people who, 
as Mr. Hogarth has reminded us, were associated 
with le printemps de la Grece,''^ the importance of 
whose civilisation as superior and certainly anterior 
to that of Greece proper is now universally recognised. 
' The rise of the Ionian civilisation,' says Professor 
Gilbert Murray, ' is in many ways the most wonderful 
phenomenon in Greek history. Every kind of in- 
tellectual advance seems to have its origin in Ionia. 
The greatest works of colonisation and commerce ; 
the first bank, the first maps, and the first effective 
Greek fleets come from there.''' These wonderful 
people are also those among whom the loftiest as- 
pirations of mankind gained the mature expression 
that helped their world-wide diffusion. Ionia was 
the fatherland of * Homer,' but it was likewise the 
first centre of Orphism in its westward advance, and, 
under the banner of Orphism, two of Ionia's illustrious 
sons, Pythagoras of Samos and Xenophanes of 
Colophon, were destined, each in his different way, to 
be leaders of revolt against Homeric authority and 
Homeric theology. We students of Rome must 
never forget that it was to Pythagoras, who established 
himself at Croton towards 530 B.C., and to the Pytha- 



156 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

gorean school, that first Southern Italy and then 
Rome and the Empire owed initiation into the exalted 
mysticism which, as we shall see, permeates much of 
the later Roman sepulchral imagery. I need hardly 
remind you that at all times of her history Rome 
received Greek ideas from Ionia — directly or through 
Magna Graecia — rather than from Greece proper. 

Scenes of Apotheosis, especially of the transit in 
the chariot, are well known in Attic art also, but 
here they are limited to the cycle of mythological 
gods and heroes, as in the familiar case of Heracles 
who often appears on black-figured vases, and vases 
of the fine period, riding to Olympus with Athena 
at his side, as in the fine red-figured pelike in 
Munich, to quote one example out of many.* Man 
is not pictured as entering the courts of heaven ; if 
the denizens of those courts wish to come in contact 
with man they are brought down to him, as on the 
frieze of the Parthenon. It is striking how few 
representations in the Greek art of the fifth to the 
third centuries are concerned to represent another 
world — whether Heaven or Hell — how little the 
artistic imagination allowed itself to play round 
the unknown which by the Attic mind was simply 
accepted as unknowable. Polygnotos, it is true, 
painted a great Underworld pageant at Delphi,'^ 
which has left many traces in contemporary and later 

* Furtwangler-Reichold, plate 109, 2. 



PLATE XXI. 




1% 



c 5 



■A 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 157 

art, but he was a native of Thasos, and the people 
by whom he was commissioned to execute the picture 
were Cnidians, i.e. Graeco- Asiatics. Thasos, it may 
be noted, produced in an exquisite reHef, now in the 
museum of Constantinople (R.R., ii. 166, i), one of 
the great masterpieces of antique sculpture, and one 
of the grandest conceptions of the dead in his glorified 
existence (plate xxi.).''^ Like the pediment of the 
Mourning Women and the earlier Harpy Tomb, this 
relief is a noble example of the sacramental function 
of art in giving visible form to the Soul's Adventure. 

VIL Graeco-Asiatic Stelae of the Hellenistic 

Period 

We return, after this somewhat lengthy excursus 
on the earlier sepulchral art of Ionia and Lycia, to 
the Graeco-Asiatic stelae of the Hellenistic period .^° 
Their usual shape is that of a niche or little chapel 
adorned with pictorial accessories, intended, it seems, 
to reproduce the main features of an actual cemetery. 
Within this sepulchral landscape the dead, who as 
often as not is represented by his portrait statue, is 
seen beside his own tomb. But since a statue is gener- 
ally meant to be looked at from the front, the intro- 
duction of the portrait figure brings back the frontal 
pose of the dead, and tends to make the dead man, 
whose effigy is sometimes raised on a pedestal, once 
more the centre of interest. There is a corresponding 



158 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

tendency to suppress the survivors, or to let them 
appear only on a diminutive scale, so that by degrees 
we work back to a heroised representation of the dead. 
A good example of these various characteristics may 
be seen in the stele of Archippos in the Cook collection 
at Richmond (plate xvii. 2 ; R.R., ii. 532, i) . What we 
observe in the sculptured stelae is borne out by epi- 
graphical evidence, such as the celebrated testament of 
Epicteta of the second century B.C. in the museum of 
Verona, found on the island of Thera,which gives all the 
circumstances and regulations for the cult of a heroised 
family {I.G.,XU. iii. 330 {Inscrr. Insul. Maris Aegei)) .^^ 
In addition symbols are now abundantly introduced, 
at times with their full significance, at others so repre- 
sented as to impart to the scene the character of genre : 
a child, for example, offers to his dog the Dionysiac 
grapes, symbolic of resurrection ; or, on another stele, 
a cock, a common offering to the dead, greedily makes 
for the fruit which a frightened little boy tries to hold 
out of the bird's reach {R.R., ii. 294, 3). Both dog 
and grapes contain a symbolic reference to the under- 
world, but this is softened by the motive of the picture 
as a whole. In Alexandria the stelae of the Hellen- 
istic period exhibit a similar imagery.^- It need not 
detain us here, as it offers no very striking variants, 
and dies without leaving any traces, overwhelmed, 
as was all Greek art in Egypt, by the persistence and 
strength of Egyptian traditions. 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 159 

VIII. Figured Tombstones in Greek Lands 
OUTSIDE Asia Minor and Attica 

It would be a fascinating and a fruitful task to trace 
the sepulchral imagery of other Greek lands outside 
Hellas proper, and of those remoter parts of Greece 
where Attic influence was not all-prevailing, but a few 
examples must suffice. In Boeotia, rich from early- 
days in the 'graves of the worshipped dead,' the people 
continued, as we learn from their rough but interesting 
sepulchral imagery, to be preoccupied with the life 
after death, and the same was the case in Macedonia. 
In the celebrated stele from Orchomenos {R.R., ii. 
373 > 3)> signed by the Naxian Alxenor, showing a man 
and his dog springing up at him, we have not so much 
the record that the man was a huntsman, as that the 
deceased is pictured here in a scheme, modified by 
Attic influence, which derives from that of the heroised 
dead as Master of the Hounds. There is at Athens 
another interesting Boeotian grave relief from Thebes 
{R.R., ii. 403, i) clearly, as far as style goes, a work 
in the Attic manner, but, as we shall see, if we look 
closely into the composition, strongly influenced by the 
old scheme of the heroised ancestors and their descen- 
dants. The former sit facing one another, much as on 
the Harpy Tomb and on the pediment of the Nereid 
monument in later lonio-Lycian art (above, p. 153). 
In Thessaly likewise we remain within a cycle of 



i6o APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

beliefs suppressed in Attica, as on that curious stele 
from Saloniki, now in Constantinople {R.R., ii. 169, 
i), on which the heroised dead sit facing their own 
tombstone round which twines the soul-snake. It 
drinks from a cup held out by the woman, while the 
man holds in his left hand a long burgeoning staff, 
sure symbol of resurrection. 

Again in Macedonia we find subjects on late stelae 
that remind us of Asia Minor rather than of Attica. 
A good example of a Macedonian tombstone is in 
the Devonshire collection at Chatsworth {R.R., ii. 
444, 5), dedicated to one Herennia Syrisca and her 
son. The lady, though wrapped in the graceful 
draperies of the third century, is seated stiffly on 
the left like a heroised ancestress of earlier date, on 
a throne-like seat, with her feet on a high footstool ; 
towards her advances a smaller female figure with 
offerings. On the opposite side, the standing figure 
of the son is likewise approached by a male figure 
much smaller than himself. A tree — symbol of re- 
birth or resurrection — forms an arch over the whole, 
and, most important of all, on either side a snake 
twines itself round its branches. We evidently have 
here, as on the Spartan reliefs, a duplication of the 
dead in human and in snake form. In the empty 
space between the heads of the personages appears 
the head of the underworld horse, and on a ledge to 
its left a tiny bird, which can scarcely be other than 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES i6i 

the soul in bird form. It is in Macedonia, likewise, 
that we find as late as the third century a remarkable 
type of sarcophagus with reclining figures on the lid 
unknown to classic Greece, though familiar in Etruria 
and Latium, and among Phoenician peoples.^^ 

In conclusion, one word must be said about the 
sepulchral art of the Greek cities of Southern Italy. 
In default of actual monuments, we can learn a great 
deal for Tarentum and Nola and Capua from the 
tombs and stelae represented on vase paintings.^* 
The kinship with the Asiatic examples is evident. 
Simple gravestones and columns and the like are 
indeed found, but the dominating form is that of the 
na'iskos, or chapel, within which stands or sits the 
dead man — once more the heroised dead conceived 
as a being of superior order. 

This survey of the sepulchral imagery of Greek 
lands, however incomplete, will serve to show that from 
the Proto-Hellenic period onward beliefs as to a future 
existence found expression in art, and that, although 
suppressed or thrown into the background of interest 
in Attica by the influence of the Homeric conception 
of the dead, which ruled in Athens from the time of 
the official introduction of Homer into Athens by 
Pisistratus at the end of the sixth century, they yet 
persisted in other parts of Greece. As frequently 
happens, the lamp of faith was kept burning among 
the humbler and less gifted peoples. Nor, as we 

L 



i62 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

have seen, was it at any time as completely extin- 
guished in philosophic and super-intellectual Athens 
as certain scholars would have us believe, while out- 
side Greece, in the Graeco- Asiatic countries open to 
Ionian art and culture, we find from the earliest times 
a rich sepulchral imagery, which, side by side with 
the more primitive symbols of the ritual of the dead, 
finds expression for the loftier beliefs in Apotheosis 
and the definite joys of a future life. The considera- 
tion of the Graeco-Asiatic stelae had already brought 
us to the very threshold of our subject and the art of 
the tombstones of the Roman Empire. But here 
again, we shall first have to consider in a fresh section 
what were the Roman conceptions of death in pre- 
Augustan times, and how far these conceptions had 
succeeded in finding plastic expression. 

IX. The Sepulchral Art of the Romans, from 
Primitive Times to the Augustan Era 

(a) Prehistoric Rome and Latium 

It has been said that the primitive Romans had 
no sense of life after death, and made little or no effort 
to pierce the gloom that envelops the state beyond 
the grave ; their misty conception may be compared 
to that of the Hebrew She'ol, the underworld where 
dwell good and bad without distinction.^^ To the 
Romans likewise the dead were long a vague ' un- 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 163 

individualised mass of spirits,* the manes who crowded 
up periodically to the opening of the mundus, the 
' gibbering ghosts ' who at fixed intervals had to be 
propitiated and banished from the homes that had 
once been theirs.^^ The Romans had in consequence 
little or no native sepulchral art ; and if we except 
the patrician custom of keeping wax images of their 
ancestors in their halls, ^' it was not till the period of 
Greek influence that they began to evolve anything 
like a sepulchral imagery. 

Let us turn at once to the evidence of the monu- 
ments. In Rome itself from primitive times we have 
little or nothing outside the famous Sepolcreto, or 
burial-ground, discovered by Boni in 1902 in the 
Roman Forum near the site of the temple of the 
deified Faustina.^^ The objects found in these early 
tombs although, artistically speaking, mean and rough, 
yet indicate a care for the future well-being of the 
dead. At this early period they are in the nature of 
amulets,^^ and are placed on the dead with the inten- 
tion of protecting them from malevolent influences. 
The cabin urns, imitated from the capanne or round 
huts of primitive Italy, show the desire to secure for 
the dead a permanent habitation similar to that 
which he enjoyed in life. 

These burial customs of ancient Latium can best 
be studied in the great museum of the Villa Giulia, 
where the extensive finds from the numerous necro- 



i64 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

poleis in the immediate vicinity of Rome have lately 
been rearranged with minute care and in chrono- 
logical order.^'' It is not a subject which I can discuss 
here except in so far as to point out to students who 
are looking round for ' fresh woods and pastures new,' 
that there is, I believe, no branch of archaeology so 
little explored and so rich in promise as this of the 
burial-grounds of ancient Latium and the adjacent 
Faliscan territory. From Falerii itself you will find, 
in the rooms on the first floor of the museum, an in- 
comparable series of objects from the tombe a pozzo, 
a fossa, and a camera, arranged in order of time. The 
graves in the shape of pits are the oldest ; they are 
followed by those in the shape of a trench for the 
reception of the cofhn ; here at Falerii follows a third 
series, that of the chamber tombs, which lasted, it 
seems, into the period of the Roman occupation. 
These tombs were hollowed out as chambers in the 
rock, and here the dead were placed either on couches, 
or else within the superimposed recesses cut in the 
walls much as in a Christian catacomb. 

All these tombs, from the earliest to the latest, 
reveal a variety of objects which clearly have in view 
the protection and well-being of the dead in an ultra- 
mundane existence : it is sufficient to point to the 
amulet- jewellery and kindred objects, and to the 
Greek vases which make their appearance from the 
sixth century onward. The stupendous finds from 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 165 

the Barberini and Bernardini tombs at Palestrlna, 
and from the Tomba RegoHni-Galassi at Cervetri in 
Southern Etruria, only a few miles from Rome,®^ 
reveal on a much richer and grander scale the same 
care for the dead that we noted among the humbler 
finds of the primitive Sepolcreto in the Forum, and 
the same desire to equip his last habitation, on the 
magical principle so often noted, with every kind of 
object the permanence of which is considered essential 
to his well-being. It would seem, however, that these 
desires and conceptions are as yet limited in scope. 
There is no clear vision of a life beyond the grave, of 
an ultramundane existence in the true sense of the 
word. These tombs reveal nothing beyond the desire 
of keeping the dead in a state closely modelled on 
his earthly life ; therefore we find no rich sepulchral 
imagery to illustrate or symbolise the soul's supreme 
adventure. Neither the closing slabs, nor the walls 
of the tombs, nor again the urns or sarcophagi, are 
painted or carved as are the sides of the Haghia Triada 
larnax, for instance, with any scenes that definitely 
formulate a belief in a life beyond and in a possible 
intercourse between the living and the dead. The 
ornament of the different objects of furniture or of 
personal adornment found in these tombs has an 
immense iconographic interest, but its character seems 
to me mainly magical or apotropaic, though on this 
point opinions are divergent. There are scholars 



i66 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

who maintain that the rich symboHsm of the orna- 
ments^ — sphinxes, griffins, Hons, chimaeras, and their 
hke — are used merely with a decorative intention, 
and thus afford a proof of a weakened religious belief 
on the part of the Latins, who, on this theory, are 
content to use as mere decoration imagery which, 
among the Greek and Eastern peoples from whom 
it appears to be borrowed, had a distinct religious 
value. I, myself, on the contrary (and I think there 
must be others of the same opinion, or would be, 
were the early art of Latium not so much neglected) , 
believe that all this decoration is part of a carefully 
thought out sepulchral imagery, mainly, if not entirely, 
protective in character. The question is one which 
it is beyond my present scope to consider in detail. 



{b) From the early Fifth Century to the E^nd of the 
Republic 

It is in Southern Etruria, at Veii, even nearer to 
Rome than Cervetri, that we find from the beginning 
or middle of the sixth century certain sepulchral 
images which bring us back to the same cycle of beliefs 
proclaimed on the paintings of the Cretan sarco- 
phagus and the carvings of the Mycenaean royal 
stelae. On the walls of the famous yet too rarely 
visited Tomba Campana at Veii,^^ the group of a 
horseman escorted by figures on foot may be inter- 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 167 

preted, I think, as the progress of the dead man to 
the other world ; he is preceded by a man armed 
with an axe presumably to cut down obstacles 
in the path. It seems certain that scenes of 
this character were introduced into Latium from 
Etruria, which in turn had them from the Greeks of 
Ionia. The journey of the dead to the underworld, 
or the transit of his soul to the eternal spheres, are 
especially common subjects in the Latin art of a later 
date when Latium and Rome had themselves fallen 
directly under the spell of Ionia. From about the 
middle or end of the sixth century we begin to find 
a type of funeral procession with chariots whose 
steeds are sometimes winged like those of the Apothe- 
osis chariots on the sarcophagus from Haghia Triada 
and the chariot of Monteleone (plate xv, 2). It is by 
no means certain that these processions, which have 
survived in immense numbers,^^ always have a fune- 
rary import ; but this can certainly be claimed for the 
numerous pieces found in tombs. Here again,, while 
some argue that the return from the funeral games is 
intended, and that wings are only given to distinguish 
the horses of the victorious chariot, others maintain 
that the scene actually represents the journey of the 
dead to his home beyond this world. The analogy of 
the Haghia Triada chariots seem to me to favour the 
second interpretation. Here also the winged chariot 
is the vehicle of Apotheosis, and the heroised or 



i68 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

quasi-deified dead is escorted by the members of his 
family. My own impression is that these processions 
partake of the mystic character of certain early 
Oriental and Greek pompai connected with the rites 
for the renewal or resurrection of the yearly vege- 
tation. Such was the famous vegetation-ritual in 
ancient Babylonia, when the gods were solemnly 
brought in summer from the temple of Marduk in 
Babylon to that of Nebo in Borsippa, and taken back 
again in winter from Borsippa to Babylon.^* There 
are numerous parallels to this custom in Egypt and 
Cyrene, in India, in China, and recent scholarship 
goes so far as to identify the four-horse chariot of 
the Roman triumphator with the vehicle of the sun- 
god's progress through the skies.^^ The funeral 
pageantry of the Romans was from early days most 
elaborate in character, but it does not seem to have 
attained to any more striking expression in art than 
these unpretending little friezes till we come to a 
much later date. 

The fragment of a wall-painting from a tomb in the 
neighbourhood of S. Eusebio on the Esquiline, now 
in the Museo dei Conservatori, is the earliest example 
on Roman soil of the decoration of a tomb (Helbig, 
967). It dates from the third century B.C., and 
represents an unknown episode from Roman history. 
Rough as it is, it reveals Graeco-Ionian influence in 
its superimposed bands of decoration, an influence that 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 169 

may have filtered through Campania, since the 
technique has various points in common with South 
ItaHan vases. In the upper frieze is the remnant of 
a battle-scene ; in the lower two generals, unknown 
to history, although their names, Quintus Fabius and 
Marcus Fannius, are inscribed above their heads, are 
seen engaged in parley. This Esquiline fresco is a 
curious and instructive example of the early importa- 
tion into Rome of a narrative method of composition 
which developed into the famous ' continuous style ' 
of the Empire. The modest fragment announces 
already what is to be the leading characteristic of 
the great art of Rome — the commemoration of the 
deeds both of the people and of individuals. 

It is characteristic of Roman conservatism and of 
Roman stubbornness in matters of art that sepulchral 
imagery made its way so slowly into Rome. The 
decoration of the peperino sarcophagus of L. Cor- 
nelius Scipio Barbatus, consul in 298 B.C., which 
was removed from the family vault of the Scipiones 
on the left of the Via Appia, and is now in the 
Vatican, is severely architectural (Helbig, 125) ; 
it exhibits no imagery, unless indeed the rosettes 
in the spaces between the triglyphs — presumably 
conventionalised blossoms — have the prophylactic 
significance which so often attaches to flowers and 
plants, and accounts for their introduction into the 
ritual and imagery of the tomb: 



170 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

(c) From the End of the Republic to Augustus 

Till we come to the last century of the Republic 
there is little funerary art in Rome. The motive 
which rises to most people's memory when they think 
of Roman tombstones is that of the dead man or the 
dead couple facing the spectator in a stiff frontal 
attitude, with the frequent addition of one or more 
children and other members of the family, arranged 
stiffly side by side. All who have been to Rome will 
remember the many examples still in situ on the Via 
Appia. The type is doubtless influenced by the 
stark wax imagines that stood in the hall of great 
Roman houses, and, though we may not go so far as to 
assert that the pose carries with it a reminiscence of 
ancestor worship, yet it shows that the Roman was 
primarily interested in presenting his dead to the 
homage of the survivors. A good illustration of this 
type of monument is furnished by the tombstone in 
the shape of a niche holding the two portraits of a man 
and his wife in the Capitoline Museum {Gall. 48*).^^ 
It is usual to neglect this class of monuments, or else 
to criticise them severely after comparing them with 
the accomplished workmanship of the Attic stelae of 
the fifth and fourth centuries ; but the comparison is 
devoid of value, since the Roman craftsman, for we 
need call him by no grander name, is trying to ex- 
press quite another idea. What he desires is not, 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 171 

like the Greek, to represent beautiful scenes of part- 
ing and reunion ; his sterner purpose is to estab- 
lish, by means of an almost hieratic pose, a direct 
relation between the living and the dead.^" The 
same principle governs the design of the Roman 
military tombstones of the provinces, which often 
resemble mediaeval rather than what is usually known 
as classical sculpture, and predominates in the sculp- 
tures of the monument at Adamklissi in the Dobrud- 
sha, which is of course nothing but a memorial to the 
soldiers who had fallen, probably in the campaign 
of Grassus in 29 b.c.*^^ At times the rigid pose is 
slightly modified, and the figures are made to bend 
towards one another and clasp hands ; but the isolated 
representation of the deceased remains characteristic 
of Roman funerary portrait art as a whole. This 
stiff frontal pose blended admirably with the art of the 
Asia Minor stelae, one main characteristic of which, 
as we have seen, was the introduction of the statue 
of the deceased in a frontal attitude ; from the 
fusion of these two types derive the statuary groups 
within niches of the Imperial period. 

The funerary statue had an important develop- 
ment practically unknown to great Greek art in the 
recumbent figures placed upon the lids of sarcophagi, 

* These tombstones, which exist in great numbers in Rome and 
throughout Italy and the provinces, need collecting into a Corpus; 
among them are to be found the best examples of the portraiture 
of private individuals, as distinct from the Imperial and official portrait. 



172 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

which went back to a high antiquity, and were pro- 
bably introduced into Rome through the influence of 
Etruscan art and custom. We have already seen 
that these figures, which are represented as reclining 
at a banquet, derived ultimately from the banqueting 
groups of Ionian art. From the archaic period we 
have three well-known examples in terra-cotta from 
Cervetri, two in the Louvre and British Museum 
respectively, and the fine group at the Villa Giulia. 
The art is distinctly Ionian, and the attitude is one 
accepted as symbolic of the attainment of Apotheosis.^^ 
Other reclining statues, of which there are numerous 
examples, are shown simply lying down, and the 
scheme is very popular in both Etruscan and Roman 
funerary art. As an example I place before you the 
recently discovered tombstone of a boy, now in the 
Terme Museum(plate xxii.) }^^ The boy lies quietly on 
his side, with eyes wide open ; nothing save the poppies 
on the couch and the egg of immortality in his hand 
indicates that life has left the fair young body. The 
highly bred lines of the face, the sweet curves of the 
mouth, the curling tips of the hair which resembles 
that of Augustus, recall the beautiful portraiture of 
the children of the Julio-Claudian house. Nowhere 
outside the Latin races do we find that strong, square 
structure of the head which even in extreme youth 
is apparent beneath the firm elastic flesh. The boy 
might be the elder brother of the child whose portrait, 



PLATE XXII. 







SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 173 

found at the Imperial Villa of Prima Porta, is now 
in the Museo Barracco, or of that other boy, who, 
masquerading as Cupid, rides his dolphin so proudly 
by the side of the great Augustus from the same Villa. 
On the right side are traces of a small Eros, present as 
the ministering Genius of death, intended perhaps for 
the boy's own Genius now parting from him, or for a 
later version of the winged Ker (p. 145) . The delicate 
technique reveals a Greek chisel ; none of the in- 
numerable reclining statues of Roman funerary art 
again touched this height of pure loveliness : 

' Lie still, and be 
For ever more a child ! 
Not grudgingly 
Whom life has not defiled 
I render thee.' 

From the close of the Republic onward we also find 
a number of grave reliefs, which represent some 
episode, generally connected with his trade, in the 
life of the dead man. The classic example is the 
frieze which adorns the monument of the baker 
Eurysaces outside the Porta Maggiore, along the 
friezes of which run reliefs representing the various 
operations of the bakery {R.R., iii. 236). Again, 
on a tombstone (in the Galleria Lapidaria of the 
Vatican) put up to a cutler of the name of L. Cornelius 
Atimetus, we see on the one side the workshop where 
the cutler grinds his knives, on the other a scene in 



174 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

the front shop where a dignified customer in the toga 
and an obsequious assistant are seen one on each side 
of the counter {R.R., iii. 404, i and 2). It has, how- 
ever, been observed, not unjustly I think, that these 
and similar scenes are not inspired so much by the 
memory of the past as by the desire to impress the 
future with the importance and success of the occu- 
pants of the tomb. A recent writer has drawn up 
an exhaustive list of the reliefs which represent trades, 
and shows that the feeling which inspires them is 
distinctly Roman.^"^ It has little or nothing to do 
with the generalised view of the past life of the de- 
ceased current on Attic stelae, but a wave of belief 
from the Orient had to permeate this class of subject 
before, as in the monument of Igel, effort and toil 
could be conceived as the prelude to a higher and 
more blessed state. 

The doctrines of resurrection and of immortality 
which began to occupy men's minds from the end of 
the Republic onwards, as a result of the infiltration 
into Rome of Oriental religions and of Pythagorean- 
ism, both of which taught that the soul once released 
from its corporeal bondage could rise into ethereal 
realms, were soon to regenerate and transform all the 
old sepulchral imagery. The new beliefs and the art 
they inspired overspread every region of the Empire 
with a rapidity which showed the greatness of the 
need they came to satisfy. 



PLATE xxrir. 




SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 175 

In the last century of the RepubHc, when Rome 
was falling under the spell of later Greek mystical 
speculation, we begin to divine on the part of the 
Romans, as Mr. Warde-Fowler has pointed out, 
' some mystical yearning to realise the condition of 
the loved ones gone before, and the relation of their 
life to that of the living.' ^"^ This quickening among 
the Romans of a sense of the divinity of the soul has 
been traced back, in measure at least, to the influence 
of the famous Posidonius of Apamea,^"^ whose teach- 
ing inspired, it is thought, Cicero's ' Dream of 
Scipio,' written in 54 B.C., and ten years later may 
have helped to soften his grief for the death of his 
daughter. We can, I believe, detect a first reflex of 
these new beliefs as to the destiny of the soul in a 
curious funerary relief in the museum of Aquila 
(plate xxiii.). It was found at Preturo in 1879, 
near the Sabine Amiternum, and had, doubtless, 
adorned one of the tombs which bordered the ancient 
Via Caecilia. The relief may belong to the last years 
of the Republic, or even be as late as the Augustan 
period. It reproduces a great funeral procession, 
with a love of pomp and detail which recalls the 
similar displays on early Dipylon vases (p. 137). In 
later Greek art the scene has scarcely a parallel, and 
in Roman art it may be said to be unique.^"* In the 
centre of the procession, on a gorgeous catafalque 
{lectus funebris), surmounted by a baldacchino em- 



176 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

broidered with the crescent moon and the constella- 
tions, lies the dead man ; at the head of the cata- 
falque is placed what appears to be his helmet. 
Eight bearers carry the bier, which is preceded by 
groups of musicians followed by a long train of 
mourners. Though this interesting relief has been 
repeatedly published, little attention has been paid 
to the stellated carpet of the canopy .^''^ The design 
is probably looked upon as ' purely decorative,' yet 
even a slight knowledge of the beliefs as to the soul's 
astral destiny, which were spreading over Italy under 
the influences referred to, suffices to show that this 
canopy embroidered with the signs of the moon and 
of the stars is simply the mantle of Heaven, the tent 
of the sky, the great cosmic envelope of the universe, 
the significance of which throughout the whole history 
of religion and ritual has been brought forward of 
late in a book as learned as it is inspiring.^"^ The idea 
of the cosmic mantle is familiar to all of us from the 
wonderful simile in Isaiah (xl. 22), that stretcheth out 
the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a 
tent to dwell in. Even more vivid is the simile in the 
Psalms (civ. 2) , Who coverest thyself with light as with 
a garment ; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain. 
The conception so beautifully expressed by Isaiah and 
the Psalmist is common to all ancient Eastern re- 
ligions, and early penetrated into Greece and thence 
to Italy. According to an ancient Semitic legend 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 177 

this ' garment of light ' calls into being by the magical 
action of its astral signs the whole material universe. 
It became an attribute of Zeus as of Jupiter Capito- 
linus ; it is worn on occasion by Sol, and by Solar 
divinities like Mithras and Attis-M^n, by Apollo and 
Dionysus, by Aphrodite as Urania, by the Ephesian 
Artemis ; as the stellated aegis of Athena it is familiar 
from a number of monuments ; finally it appears in 
Christian art as the blue, star-embroidered mantle of 
Our Lady and of Christ as Kosmokrator. Alexander 
adopted a great starred talismanic mantle, doubtless 
endowing the wearer with power over the universe. 
The same idea attaches to the stellated mantle worn 
by the Roman Emperors, from whom it passes to the 
rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. The mantle, in 
fact, is a talisman of victory, and as such acquires 
high spiritual significance as clothing the soul in its 
ascent to Heaven. It becomes, so to speak, a vehicle 
of Apotheosis, a meaning possibly attaching to it in 
the present instance.^*'" 

Thus the star-spangled canopy spread above the 
dead on the relief from Amiternum has the same sym- 
bolic value as the starry firmament painted on the 
vault of Mithraic caves and churches. The absence 
of the Sun among the heavenly bodies represented 
on the canopy is a significant proof of that persistent 
supremacy of the cult of the Moon to the exclusion 
of the fiercer Star which is so characteristic of popular 

M 



178 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

astral religion in hot countries where, as Cumont has 
pointed out, the moon with its gentler light was looked 
upon as the more beneficent of the two luminaries. 
We must likewise bear in mind that within this same 
cycle of ideas the Moon was looked upon as the special 
abode of spirits who, if exiled awhile to our sub-lunar 
sphere, would return to their original seats after a com- 
plicated ascent through the superimposed zones of 
heaven, during which they gradually despoiled them- 
selves of their earthly faculties and passions. ^^^ 

This idea of a descent and reascent of the soul, so 
common in the astral eschatology of the East, at once 
puts one in mind of the noble passage in Cicero's 
Somnium Scipionis, at the close of the Republic, now 
generally thought, as previously stated (page 175), 
to have been inspired by the mystical teaching of 
Posidonius : 

omnibus qui patriam conservaverint, adiuverint, auxe- 
rint, certum esse in coelo definitum locum, ubi beati aevo 
sempiterno fruantur ; nihil est enim illi principi deo, qui 
omnem mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat, acceptius 
quam concilia coetusque hominum iure sociati, quae 
civitates appellantur ; harum rectores et conservatores hinc 
profecti hue revertuntur. — Cic, de Rep., vi. 13, 

The personage on the Amiternum relief — whether 
local magnate or known to a larger fame — is likewise 
presented as deserving of the sempiternal beatitude ; 
as ranking with Scipio and those great men of the 



SYMBOLISM ON ROMAN TOMBSTONES 179 

State who return to the heavenly seats whence they 
had descended for the benefit of humanity ; as par- 
ticipating in the astral honours accorded to Caesar in 
his Apotheosis, and looking down on earth de excelso 
et pleno stellarum inlustri et claro quodam loco. The 
starred canopy under which the great man reclines is 
thus of cardinal importance as the earliest expression 
in Roman Western art of those beliefs in an astral 
eschatology which received official sanction in the 
myth of the sidus Julium, of the astrum Caesaris, of 
which we have already spoken, which were to play 
so preponderating a role in the religious develop- 
ment of the Empire,^"^ and to leave such vivid traces 
in its art. ^-' The picture of the transit of the soul to the 
stars, brought into the service of the Imperial Apothe- 
osis, continued to gain in power and vividness till it 
assumes the form given it on the celebrated ivory in 
the British Museum (plate xxxi.), where the Divus is 
borne aloft to his eternal home by the winged figures 
of Sleep and Death, in a scheme that might be used 
for the Ascension of a Christian Saint. 

The relief of Amiternum, with its pompous funeral 
procession, smiled at by the commentators as the 
expression of provincial vanity, marks the intrusion 
into the Roman world of beliefs destined to revolu- 
tionise man's outlook on his destiny in an After Life. 
Henceforth it is not only Greece or Ionia that feeds 
the spiritual imagination of ancient Italy ; for an 



i8o APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

explanation of the new creeds we must look beyond 
Ionia to the Asiatic Hinterland, to those ancient 
Oriental civilisations where Orphism itself had had its 
birth, and where from the beginning of things the 
astral bodies were thought to hold the secret of life 
and death. 

Tournons done, comme la religieuse Chaldee, nos yeux 
vers le del absolu ou les astres, en un inextricable chiffre, 
ont dresse notre acte de naissance, et tiennent greffe de 
nos pactes et de nos serments.* 

* Paul Claudel, La Connaissance du Temps, p. 46. 



LECTURE III 

THE AFTER LIFE {continued) 

Af) t6t€ (Te npos "OXvfiTTou ayei TTvpiXafiiris o;f»7fJia, 
aficfn BveWeirjcri KVKwiievov iv crrpocfiaXiy^i, 
Xv(ra.[j.evov ^porecov pedeav ttoXvtXijtov dvlriv 
rj^eis 8'aWepiov (f)aeos narpaiov avKrjV, 
evOev aTTOirXay^Oeis fieponTjiov es Sefias fjXdes. 

The Oracle to the Emperor Julian. 

I. Symbolism of the Apotheosis of the Soul. 
The Eagle and the Wreath 

We saw at the close of the last lecture that the belief 
in the soul's return to the starry spheres was already 
familiar to the Rome of the Late Republic, and we 
discovered in the relief of Amiternum a striking 
illustration of the doctrine. I propose now to pass 
from general considerations to the more detailed 
examination of certain of the images and symbols 
which now appear on the gravestones of the Empire. 
The belief in the soul's immortality, sanctioned as it 
was by the Apotheosis of the Ruler, had received fresh 
lustre, and it is not surprising to find that the two 
main symbols of the Imperial Deification — the eagle 
and the wreath — are also among the most popular of 
sepulchral images. We have seen that they were 

131 



i82 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

borrowed from the East, and their origin and meaning 
has been lately explained in the light of certain Syrian 
monuments. In the epoch-making paper already 
referred to, Vaigle funeraire des Syriens ei Vapo- 
fhSose des Empereurs,^ Cumont, our leader here as in 
everything pertaining to the history of the Oriental 
religions, has traced back the Imperial eagle to the 
Eastern belief according to which the eagle, as mes- 
senger of the Sun, is entrusted by his master with 
the mission of bearing back to the heavens the soul 
that has thrown off the bondage of the body ; while 
the wreath, later a familiar emblem of victory, was 
in the same circle of beliefs symbolic of the ultimate 
triumph of the soul. The two emblems appear con- 
joined on a number of sepulchral slabs found at 
Hierapolis and other Syrian sites, on which the eagle 
is shown with outspread wings, bearing a wreath in 
his beak or in his talons {op. cit., figs, i ff.). A relief 
carved on the face of the arch of a rock tomb at 
Frikya, near the Syrian Apamea, offers an illuminating 
commentary on the meaning of this eagle and wreath 
motive (ibid., fig. i6). Over the keystone is a bust 
of the dead within a laurel- wreath, immediately above 
which once hovered an eagle, now much broken. The 
motive is repeated, so to speak, in another and major 
key : for at one side a Victory bearing a wreath 
reaches out to offer it to the dead, while on the other 
Sol Sanctissimus looks on and seems to protect the 



THE AFTER LIFE 183 

transit of the soul. We cannot doubt that the same 
meaning attaches to a group of funerary monuments 
found in the ancient Pannonia and Noricum, interest- 
ing not only for their iconography but for the vigorous 
quality of their art.^ The finest of the three is the 
medallion of a centurion in the Museum of Graz, 
(plate xxiv. i ; R.R., ii. 126, 3). The officer wears the 
metal cuirass adorned on the breast with the Medusa 
head to avert evil influences, and girt at the waist 
with the cingulum ; the end of the cloak or sagum is 
visible on the left shoulder. In his left hand he holds 
the sword with a pommel in the shape of an eagle's head ; 
in his right is the short vine staff that marks his office ; 
in the background to the left appears his shield (the 
parmula). The figure, cut off below the waist, is 
placed within a medallion formed by a laurel-wreath, 
upon which stands a small eagle with outspread wings. 
Here again we have the idea of the eagle bearing back 
to the celestial spheres the soul whose victory is sym- 
bolised by the wreath. It is possible, however, that 
two conceptions meet and mingle in this symbolism 
when found on a soldier's grave, for the wreath was 
likewise the military corona triumphalis, and the eagle 
was the sign of the legions ; but the manner in which 
the two emblems are combined is clearly influenced 
by their Syrian prototypes. When the wreath adorns 
the medallion of a civilian, especially if he is repre- 
sented with his wife, then any military allusion is 



t84 apotheosis AND AFTER LIFE 

out of the question, and the wreath can only be the 
crown of immortality. At Graz and in the Museum 
of Klagenfurt respectively are two fine instances of 
medallions in the portraits of a bearded man wrapped 
in the toga, and his wife, placed within a laurel wreath. 

The symbolism of these stelae must not cause us 
to overlook their artistic value. They are master- 
pieces of portraiture which would long ago have 
attracted admiration had they adorned mediaeval 
Christian tombstones in a church. Being Roman 
works of the second century, they have only been 
discussed from an antiquarian standpoint, with 
scarcely an allusion to their style ; yet we are far 
enough from the insipidity of Graeco- Roman art ; 
we already feel ourselves among men who in time 
will contribute to the great sculptures of mediaeval 
Europe. And in the drawing of the faces there is a 
vigour of line that is worthy of Holbein. Each of 
these medallions was once surmounted by a pine- 
cone, now broken, the symbol, as we shall presently 
see, of resurrection. 

Examples of these wreathed medallions are common 
throughout the Empire, though they rarely attain 
such excellence. From Rome comes the beautiful 
double medallion of Antistius, a Salian priest of Alba, 
and his wife Antistia (now in the British Museum). 
The character of the portraits and the fine lettering of 
the inscription show that the date is Augustan. Each 



PLATE XXIV. 





1. Tombstone of a Centurion. Graz. 

2. Tombstone of Flavian Period. British Museum. 



THE AFTER LIFE 185 

medallion is wreathed in a heavy crown of laurel ; 
between them lies what appears to be the staff with 
which the Salian priest struck his shield in the sacred 
dance. It is now sheathed in laurel leaves and further 
protected by an elaborate knot against the malign 
attacks of evil spirits. In each of the spandrels is 
a quatrefoil rosette.^ A striking example of Flavian 
date, recently acquired by the British Museum and 
published here for the first time,^ shows a fine portrait 
of a middle-aged man within a deep circular recess 
heavily wreathed with laurel (plate xxiv. 2) . 

The oak-wreaths which appear on a small group of 
funerary altars are generally explained as a fashion 
influenced by the oaken corona civica, which usually 
adorns one face of altars dedicated to the Lares, and 
which was bestowed as a reward for valour.^ Here 
again, as in the medallion of the centurion described 
above, there may be a contact of two ideas. When, for 
instance, the altar was set up for a magistrate or high 
official, the wreath may have been understood as 
combining in itself a double allusion to the civic worth 
of the dead and to his spiritual victory. On the other 
hand, when the altar is dedicated to the Manes 
(Altmann, 244), or is put up to a woman, the wreath 
of oak-leaves can only stand, I think, for the corona 
immortalis, though the use of the leaf of the oak may 
be determined by the vogue which the corona civica 
enjoyed in Augustan times, owing to its bestowal 



i86 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

on the Emperor himself. The trailing wreath sup- 
porting an eagle with outspread wings, which so 
frequently adorns Roman sepulchral altars, has, of 
course, the same significance as the wreath and eagle. 
At other times the space above or below the wreath 
is filled by a Nereid or some fantastic escort of the soul 
in its voyage to the Isles of the Blest. The history 
of the wreath which adorns Roman monuments 
admirably illustrates the power of religion in bending 
to a high purpose symbols and emblems that have 
their origin in the timid outlook and puerile fears of 
primitive man. In the beginning it was a mere 
amulet, a magic device worn to protect the head 
against evil influences, and therefore especially needed 
by personages so important to the welfare of the com- 
munity as kings or priests.^ From these humble 
beginnings it was destined to become in time the 
sign of life eternal. 

The wreath as emblem of immortality occurs on 
the impressive frieze that runs round the interior of 
the octagonal tomb of Diocletian in his palace of 
Spalato, just below the dome.' The frieze represents 
love-gods engaged in hunting-scenes and chariot-races, 
to symbolise the conflict between the powers of dark- 
ness and of light ; heads within medallions and masks 
break at intervals the continuity of the design; one, on 
the central space on the left as one faces the window, 
represents Hermes with wings, no doubt as psycho- 



THE AFTER LIFE 187 

pontpos or escort of the soul ; the second is the ideal- 
ised portrait of Diocletian himself (plate i. 3), patron 
and protector of the cults of Sol and of Mithras, who 
is here imagined as borne aloft to the celestial sphere 
within the crown of immortality that represents his 
final Apotheosis ; a similar portrait of the Empress 
on the other side balances that of the Emperor.^ 
Finally, I may note that the image of a boy carried 
upward by an eagle as on a stele at Grado (R.R., ii. 
126, 4), generally interpreted as Ganymede, is more 
probably an image of the triumphant soul borne aloft 
to heaven by the eagle symbol of the soul's victory. 

II. Influence of Mithraism on Sepulchral 
Imagery 

(a) The Mithraic Legend 

The influence of Mithraism in the formation of the 
funerary imagery of the Empire was all-powerful. 
The legend of the Persian sun-god, besides offering in 
the translation of Mithras to the heavens an archetype 
of the Apotheosis, was also rich in episodes capable of 
interpretation as mystic parallels of the sufferings and 
trials which prelude a blessed immortality. The cult 
of Mithras had spread with lightning rapidity from 
the moment of its introduction into Italy by the 
Orientals in the army of Pompey. Its monuments 
have been found in every part of the Empire, though 



188 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

nowhere in greater number than along the Danube 
and in Germania. Both they and the Mithraic re- 
ligion have become very famiUar through the great 
work of Franz Cumont,^ who has also popularised 
his researches in a small volume which every student 
should read. The majority of Mithraic reliefs are 
large altar-pieces that were placed above the altar at 
the end of the Mithraic church or chapel. The central 
scene of the front face is invariably the Mithraic 
sacrifice : at the bidding of a higher Power Mithras 
slays the Sacred Bull of Ormuzd, from whose body 
spring the vine and corn — to be transmuted later 
into the wine and the bread of the holy mysteries — 
while his blood fertilises the earth that she may bring 
forth plants and animals for the service of man. The 
scene is watched by two torch-bearers, the one with 
raised, the other with inverted, torch, emblems of heat 
and life, of cold and death. The four elements also 
are present in symbolic form : the fire that purifies 
all things, and whose r61e in the Mithraic cult is pre- 
eminent, is figured as a lion ; water is indicated by 
an over- turned jar ; while the figures of the winds that 
appear in the spandrels of the altar-slab at once 
represent the element of air, and the cardinal points 
of the sky. The scene thus acquires a cosmic signi- 
ficance, which is further heightened by the signs of 
the zodiac placed round the arch of the cave, while 
the cave itself was painted to imitate the starry vault 



THE AFTER LIFE 189 

of heaven. It is In vain that loathly reptiles sent 
by the Powers of Evil try to frustrate the divine pur- 
pose of the sacrifice, and attack the vital organs of 
the bull ; the faithful dog of Mithras keeps watch, 
and protects the soul of the dying beast in its ascent 
to heaven. 

The central scene is often surrounded by a number 
of panels which represent various episodes of the 
Mithraic legend : the miraculous nativity of Mithras, 
for instance, in the presence of the astonished shep- 
herds ; his victorious encounter with the Sun ; his 
pursuit and capture of the Bull ; and his ascension 
into heaven in the Sun's fiery chariot. The back of 
the altar-piece was likewise occasionally carved ; on 
the reverse of a Mithraic altar-piece at Wiesbaden, 
for instance, Mithras and Sol contemplate the slain 
victim,^" while that of a very roughly carved example 
at Serajevo exhibits the rare and curious scene of the 
Mithraic communion, celebrated by the Mithraic 
adepts in memory of a Last Supper, of which, before 
their common ascension, Mithras and Sol partook 
in company with their disciples. I will not repeat 
here what I have said in my book on Roman Sculp- 
ture, of the artistic merits of many of these Mithraic 
altar-pieces — of the exalted expression and noble 
gesture of Mithras ; of the contrast which his im- 
passioned beauty offers to the pensive attitude of 
his torch-bearers ; of the observation of nature re- 



190 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

vealed in the rendering of the bull's agony ,^^ The 
type of Mithras was, it is thought, inspired by Per- 
gamene models ; in any case it represents the last effort 
of Pagan art to create the type of a divinity out of 
its own imaginings. The religion that was to make 
the next appeal to formative art was to meet it half- 
way by offering to it the reality of a god incarnate. 

Mithraism spread in time to every rank of society, 
and coalesced with cognate cults like that of the 
Magna Mater. But as it was originally introduced 
and propagated by the army, so it remained to the 
last an essentially military cult, which left its traces 
wherever the Roman legions penetrated. Its popu- 
larity among the soldiery is easily accounted for by 
its direct appeal to their naive faith and piety. In 
distant lands, on forced marches, and among the 
privations and discomforts of camp life, the Northern 
recruits under the parching heat of the Eastern sun, 
the Southerners and Orientals amid the unfamiliar 
frosts and fogs of the North, would be inspired with 
fresh courage by the contemplation of the wanderings 
and sufferings of Mithras, and gather strength from 
the central scene of the legend for the soldier's 
supreme sacrifice : 

Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull dies. 
Look on thy children in darkness. Oh, take our sacrifice ! 
Many roads Thou hast fashioned : all of them lead to the Light, 
Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright ! 



THE AFTER LIFE 191 

(b) Miihraic Symbols on Roman Tombstones 

We can watch the gradual infiltration of Mithraic 
symboHsm into Roman sepulchral imagery from the 
time of Augustus onwards. It will repay us to 
examine one or two examples in detail, and we shall 
find these to be most instructive where different 
strata of symbolism have run together. An excellent 
instance of this process is afforded by the stele of one 
Tiberius Julius and his daughter at Walbersdorf,^^ 
which shows a combination of at least three types 
of funerary decoration. The design falls into two 
halves : an aedicula between twisted columns rests 
upon a carved base ; this upper part is supported 
upon the inscription slab, which is framed by Corin- 
thian pilasters, and rests upon a second base with a 
sunk panel likewise carved in relief. Within the 
niche the portraits of Tiberius and his daughter 
are seen side by side in the isolated frontal pose 
characteristic of Roman sepulchral portraiture ; the 
relief immediately below represents an episode in the 
dead man's career. He is shown in the uniform of 
the mounted auxiliary, charging at an enemy who 
awaits his attack crouching behind a large shield ; 
behind is a second fallen enemy ; in the empty 
space above this figure flies the eagle of victory, 
significant in this case of earthly glory rather than of 
spiritual triumph. On the sunk panel of the lower 



192 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

socle two armed men thrust at one another with long 
spears in front of a figure of Eris ; the man on the 
right, who is placed frontally and raises his right 
hand, has been interpreted as a lanista or umpire. 
It were straining our instrument to breaking-point to 
read a mystic intention into either relief. At a later 
period battle and combat scenes might be taken to 
refer to the battles and perils of the soul ; but both 
portraiture and names show the stele to belong to the 
Augustan period. At so early a date such scenes 
are more likely to represent, in the Greek manner, 
episodes of the dead man's career, though the choice of 
subject may be influenced in a measure by the desire, 
which seems to have animated every true Roman, of 
handing down his deeds, his res gestae, to the admira- 
tion of posterity. 

It is otherwise with the carvings above the niche, 
which have been admirably interpreted by Cumont. 
The winds on the spandrels are the same that appear 
on Mithraic monuments to mark their cosmic setting. 
The tritons blowing their horns, and facing one another 
on the frieze, are the mystic escort of the soul as it 
voyages to the Isles of the Blest ; the running lions, 
placed heraldically within the pediment, represent 
the element of fire, which, as we shall see more clearly 
in the monument we shall consider next, purifies the 
soul preparatory to its ascent. 

On a small sepulchral shrine at Maros-N6m6ti in 



THE AFTER LIFE 193 

Hungary, are combined a number of scenes and sym- 
bols which throw light on our subject : ^^ on the inner 
central wall the family of the deceased is carved in 
relief ; other personages appear on the external face 
of the side walls. On each of the uprights of the 
same aedicula, a snake gliding upwards figures, I 
believe, the progress of the soul towards the celestial 
regions, even as in the solar cults the snake sym- 
bolises the sinuous course of the sun across the sky. 
Thus the snake, already a familiar emblem of the soul 
in Greek and Roman religion and ritual, is endowed 
with a new meaning. On the roof, lions devour 
the Mithraic bull, characterised by the sacrificial sash, 
the while they guard the pine-cone of resurrection 
which crowns the monument. The frequency with 
which the lion appears on the later Roman tombs, 
either alone, or devouring an animal, is not sufficiently 
explained by calling the lion the protector of the tomb, 
or (in the case of the graves of soldiers) an emblem of 
valour. When in the solar cults the image became 
associated with the igneous element, it was charged 
with a mystic significance, which, as we have seen, 
may already have been attached to it, in some degree, 
in Lycian and Ionian sepulchral art. In my opinion, 
the idea which it is designed to convey is that the 
purifying fire expressed by the lion must consume the 
earthly tenement, represented by the bull, giver of 
earthly fertility, before the liberated soul can attain 

N 



194 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

immortality.^* At this period the motive of a lion 
overpowering a bull or some other animals can scarcely 
be otherwise explained. At times we even find a man 
in place of the bull. This substitution of an actual 
human figure for the symbolic animal makes the inter- 
pretation I propose practically certain. We must 
bear in mind that in the East, whence all these beliefs 
and cults derive, not only was fire regarded as an all- 
powerful purifying agent, but death by fire was looked 
upon as ' an apotheosis which raised the victim to 
the rank of the gods.' ^^ I need not dwell further 
here on the purificatory powers appertaining to fire in 
Eastern belief, for the subject has been treated by 
Sir J. G. Frazer in a masterly passage of Adonis. 
You should consider more particularly the follow- 
ing quotation from lamblichus, translated by him, 
since it appears to be the direct expression of the 
idea expressed symbolically in the group of the lion 
devouring or holding his prey on Roman sepulchral 
monuments : 

' Fire,' says lamblichus, ' destroys the material part of 
sacrifices, it purifies all things that are brought near it, 
releasing them from the bonds of matter and, in virtue of 
the purity of its nature, making them meet for communion 
with the gods. So, too, it releases us from the bondage 
of corruption, it likens us to the gods, it makes us meet 
for their friendship, and it converts our material nature 
into an immaterial.' — De Mysteriis, v. 12. 



THE AFTER LIFE 195 

A kindred significance probably attached, as we 
have seen, to the Graeco-Oriental prototypes of the 
group. 

The pine-cone appears almost as constantly or 
these tombstones as the cross on Christian graves. 
As an emblem of fertility the pine-cone was certain 
to acquire, under the influence of the new beliefs in an 
After Life, fresh value as an emblem of resurrection, 
since it was the fruit of the tree specially sacred to 
Attis,^® the youth who from a self-inflicted death 
awoke to new life and to perfect union with the 
divinity : ' Just as Attis died and came to life every 
year . . . believers were to be born to a new life after 
death.' This cult of Attis, which came from the East 
with that of the Great Mother, gathered fresh force 
under the influence of Mithraism, and Attis — a young 
man in Oriental costume leaning dejectedly upon a 
knotted staffs' — is not an uncommon figure on 
gravestones. A good example occurs on a stele 
from Klausenburg, now in Vienna ^^ : on the front 
are portraits of the deceased surmounted by the 
apotropaic gorgon ; on the left is a figure of Attis ; 
to the right, above a dolphin, emblem of the soul or 
of its transit, is a female figure, probably another 
deceased member of the family ; above her again 
appears an eagle bearing a wreath ; and the whole 
is crowned by the pine-cone. 

It has been suggested that the pine-cone is so 



196 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

frequently used to adorn graves because of its likeness 
to the grave conus, which is itself derived from the 
omphalos-shaped tumulus or tholosP Further, it has 
been argued that the conical stone placed over the 
tumulus is simply the phallic emblem of life ; such a 
stone crowned the Tomb of Tantalus in Phrygia, and 
appears times without number in Etruscan and 
Graeco- Roman tumuli derived from Graeco-Asiatic 
models. I imagine that this sepulchral conus was 
never regarded as purely architectonic and ornamental, 
but that it owed its popularity as a funerary emblem 
to the fact that its original meaning, though modified, 
was not entirely forgotten. Nothing would be more 
natural than definitely to represent the emblem of 
generation by means of the cognate shape of the 
fruit which from time immemorial had itself been 
regarded as an instrument of fertility. Then, again, 
this primitive symbol becomes, by the purifying 
influence of religion, the visible pledge of a spiritual 
resurrection. 

A curiously interesting and little heeded instance 
of the use of the pine-cone in pre-Augustan times 
occurs in a cemetery at Praeneste (Palestrina) first 
excavated in 1855.^** It dates from a time anterior 
to the Roman conquest of the town by Sulla in 82 B.C. 
Each of its graves was surmounted by a square block 
supporting a plinth upon which rose a cone. The 
name of the dead, with no sort of addition, is simply 



E S E R V E D 



e 

(Print last name first) 



ASE RETURN THIS BOOK 
) RETURN DESK IN THE 
JADING ROOM. 



erence books and recent volumes 

riodicals may not be reserved, 

re to be returned to the desk in 

leading Room on the same day 

ire taken from the shelves. 

lier volumes of periodicals are 

illy not reserved beyond two 

and exceptions to this rule must 

iiorized. 

;ion and genealogical material 

lot be reserved. 

reserved books are subject to 

on demand. 

limit for reservation is ordi- 

three days. 

JEE BOOKS ONLY may be 
'ed. 



PLATE XXV. 




A Family Group. 
Museum of Arlon. 



THE AFTER LIFE 197 

inscribed on base or cone. These primitive tomb- 
stones, degraded though they now are from their 
function, and thrown together in a neglected heap 
outside the Httle local museum of Palestrina, still 
have the perfume of faith lingering about them ; 
they proclaim by means of the naive emblem the 
belief in resurrection held by the ancient race whose 
last resting-place they mark. 

III. Orphic and Dionysiac Symbolism 

It is among the Roman provincial tombstones of 
the Imperial period that the myth of Orpheus defi- 
nitely makes its appearance as a sepulchral theme. 
The origins of Orphism are still wrapped in mystery, 
but there seems reason to believe that, like Mithraism, 
it came from the East, though it had appeared in the 
West and established itself firmly both in Greece 
and Italy many centuries before the Persian Sun- 
god — leaving Greece untouched — had been brought to 
Italy by Pompey's Oriental soldiery. Apparently 
Orphism had its rise in Persia, whence it spread to 
Ionia and, in the sixth century, to Attica.^^ I called 
attention in the last lecture to the apparent absence of 
Orphic influence on the sepulchral imagery of Attica 
and Hellas in the fifth century, but in Southern Italy, 
where Orphism, bringing with it the astral eschato- 
logy of the East, had become the basis of Pytha- 
gorean doctrines, we often find the myth itself, and 



198 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

more especially the episode of the Descent into Hell, 
figured on vases. Orphism, more vividly than any 
other ancient creed, brings the consoling hope that the 
passage from this world is to a happier state ; psychic 
immortality is the pledge of the high promise attaching 
to Orphic initiation, for what else is death itself but 
the supreme initiation ? * To die,' says the mystic 
writer whose fragment on the immortality of the 
Soul has been attributed to Plutarch, * is to be 
initiated into the Great Mysteries.' Orpheus became 
the Great Mediator, the supreme witness that death 
is not an irrevocable fact, and it is in this aspect that 
his figure makes its appearance on the tombstones of 
the Empire. Who better than the prophet-priest 
who had taught the doctrine of immortality, and was 
pictured in later legend as the lover who descended 
to Hades to obtain the release of a beloved soul, 
could express the hopes of an After Life ? Nor can we 
forget that Orpheus in his double aspect of priest and 
lover was endeared to popular imagination by the 
poetry of Vergil, who in the Fourth Georgic has told 
in pathetic lines the quest of Orpheus for Eurydice 
— dulcis coniux, — and in the Sixth Aeneid enthrones 
Orpheus as impressive central figure — longa cum 
veste sacerdos — in the Elysian fields. 

The monument in the market-place at Pettau, with 
scenes from the Orphic legend, is worth examining in 
detail {R.R., ii. 130, 2).^^ It is a tall stele six metres 



THE AFTER LIFE 199 

high, surmounted by a mask which, Hke the Medusa 
face so often placed on graves, has the apotropaic 
function of warding off evil spirits ; the lion devour- 
ing the head of an animal at each corner symbolises 
the purifying fire which consumes the earthly dross 
— an interpretation as much in harmony with Orphic 
as with Mithraic belief. According to the former 
' the Soul,' to quote a recent writer, ' in its pure state 
consists of fire like the divine stars from which it falls : 
in the impure state throughout the period of re-incar- 
nation, its substance is infected with the baser 
elements and weighed down by the gross admixture 
of the flesh.' ^^ The flesh, therefore, must be con- 
sumed by fire, as the bull is by the lion, before the 
liberated soul can rise to the firmament of stars ; the 
notion is identical to that of baptism by fire, * which 
burns all sins.' -* 

On the central frieze we see Orpheus playing to 
the beasts ; on the lower Orpheus has w^on to the 
very courts of death, and plays before Pluto and 
Proserpina. In the pediment a female figure reclines 
by the side of a youth : it is Venus reunited to Adonis, 
whose death and resurrection, followed by his mystic 
reunion to the divinity, was to mark him out, like 
Attis, as a popular symbol of resurrection. On the 
side of the monument are represented Dionysiac 
figures, Maenads with bunches of grapes, to symbolise 
the joys that await the Blessed in their eternal dwell- 



200 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

ing. Were these taken literally, it might be urged 
that they represented a too purely material concep- 
tion of the after-joys of the Blessed ; but, by this time, 
the whole cycle of Bacchic beings and attributes — 
including the grape and its juice — had acquired a 
purely mystic significance. Did not the vine, as 
Cumont points out, spring from the back of the sacred 
bull that it might afterwards give the fruit for the 
wine of the mysteries ? Dionysus himself ranks with 
the most ancient and venerable nature-powers ; he 
is a * vegetation god with annual appearances and dis- 
appearances,' in his earliest Thracian home 'a great 
nature god of the living earth, working especially in 
its vitalising warmth and juices,' ^^ who, as Sabazius, 
is not unfrequently identified with the Phrygian 
Attis. The story of Dionysus, like other nature 
myths, became in the course of time a parable of that 
more mystic resurrection which is the spiritual form 
of the ancient TraXiryryevea-ia, already an article of faith 
in primitive Thrace, where, from the earliest times, 
Orpheus appears closely akin to Dionysus ; it is 
therefore only natural to find Dionysiac beings com- 
bined with Orphic scenes, as on the monument at 
Pettau. On the right side of the beautiful stele of 
Albinius Asper and his wife Restituta in the museum 
of Treves {R.R., ii. 91, 4), we see a grandly drawn 
Maenad holding up a bunch of grapes, and a similar 
figure doubtless adorned the lost left side. A still 



PLATE XXVI. 




Satyr and Maenad. 
Museum of Arlon. 



THE AFTER LIFE 201 

more striking instance is in the museum of Arlon 
(Esperandieu, 4040) : within a curtained recess stand 
two men and two women, probably two brothers 
and their respective wives ; at the sides are a dancing 
Bacchante clapping the castanets, and a Satyr holding 
up a bunch of grapes (plates xxv., xxvi.). Smaller 
Bacchic figures adorn the panels of the angle pilasters, 
and may be compared to the putti on the uprights of 
the I gel monument. At Treves there is a good 
example of the group of Dionysus leaning on a Satyr, 
which not unfrequently crowns the tower-like monu- 
ments of the Mosel and Rhine districts.-*^ 

IV. The Dioscuri, Heracles and Aeneas, as Em- 
blems OF the Wanderings and Triumph of 
THE Soul. Death conceived as a Sacred 
Marriage. Retrospect 

The Dioscuri, likewise, who alternately participate 
in life and death, must be understood as emblems of 
future life. They appear on one side of a little 
funerary aedicula in the museum of Mayence,-^ for 
instance, while on the other is represented one of 
the Labours of Hercules, to remind the living of the 
probation which precedes reward. ^^ The myth of 
Hercules {vagus Hercules) , whose labours and wander- 
ings are frequently represented, has thus come to 
symbolise the trials and victories of the soul ; and the 
same meaning must have been attached to the figure 



202 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

of the wandering Aeneas, so frequently found on the 
graves of the districts along the Danube and Rhine 
{R.R., ii. 120, 1-2).^^ In the selection of the episode 
of the exiled Aeneas, bearing on his shoulders his aged 
father and leading his little son by the hand, the 
Roman provincial was, we may feel certain, proud 
to link what seemed to him the heroic counterpart of 
his own toilsome life in a distant land with the noblest 
legends of the origin of Rome. 

The same preoccupation with life after death may 
be studied in a number of stelae whose decoration is 
drawn from a restricted group of Graeco-Roman myths 
reproduced as susceptible of spiritual interpretation 
rather than for any interest in their art-forms, which 
are clumsily imitated in a poor or rough technique. 
The story of Rhea Silvia and of Mars, which occurs, 
for instance, on the front face of a sarcophagus from 
Aquincum, now in the museum of Buda-Pest {R.R., 
ii. 120, 4),^*^ and on the west pediment of the Igel 
column, near Treves, has a doubly symbolic force. 
The Soul awakes to a vision of the divine, even as 
Rhea awakes from her weary slumber to behold the 
immortal lover swiftly descending to comfort her, 
for death itself is but a sleep which leads to a 
blessed awakening and consolation. At the same 
time it seems to me certain that the story of Mars 
and Rhea on these reliefs may be interpreted as a 
Sacred Marriage, a hierogamy between the Soul 



THE AFTER LIFE 203 

and God. And the many incidents of rapes — those 
of Proserpina, of Ganymede, of Hylas, and of the 
daughters of Leucippus — and the myth of Cupid 
and Psyche, forecast a wedded union with the Divine 
Love.^^ 

By the second century a.d. the sepulchral art of the 
Roman Empire was everywhere in possession of a rich 
imagery, but nowhere better than on the provincial 
stelae can we follow the spiritual ideals that were 
spreading from the East to the Western provinces of 
the Empire. Like that of the Christian tombs of a 
somewhat later date, their iconography is an illumi- 
nating commentary on the beliefs of the time. How- 
ever crude their symbolism, however naive their 
images or rude their art, these stelae consistently 
offer to the living the supreme guarantee that death 
is not irrevocable. Their distinctive note is the 
defiance of death, the assertion of life beyond the 
grave. We seem to read here the challenge of the 
apostle, * O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, 
where is thy victory ? ' They forcibly bring home 
to us the change that had passed over the spiritual 
temper of mankind since the Greeks of the fifth and 
fourth centuries B.C., in their uncertain apprehension 
of things future, had been content to sink the mystery 
of death in the memory of life, and had adorned their 
stelae with scenes of meeting or farewell. They are, 
as it were, the visible pledge of that definite reaction 



204 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

from the cultured philosophy of the later Republic, 
which was announced in clear tones by the poetry 
of Vergil. The Vitae summa hrevis spem nos vetat 
inchoare longam of Horace might still express in 
pointed phrase the fashionable scepticism of his day, 
and remain typical of a certain section of society far 
down into the Empire, as countless inscriptions testify. 
But the message conveyed by the humble imagery of 
our provincial tombstones is quite other. Here the 
same sense of the shortness of life bids us seek an 
infinite hope and fix our gaze on the illimitable 
stretches of the life beyond the grave. A higher 
hope, a nobler faith soon began to stir in all classes. 
Not long after the elder Pliny, at the beginning of 
his second book, had repudiated all belief in immor- 
tality {Nat. Hist., ii. § i8 ff.), Tacitus addressed the 
shade of Agricola in words that seem like the distant 
echo of the Dream of Scipio : 

If there be a place for the shades of the good, if, as 
those who know will have it, great souls are not extin- 
guished with the body, rest in peace, and recall us thy 
family from our unworthy longing and the lamentations 
of the women, to the contemplation of thy virtues, for 
which it beseems us neither to mourn in private nor to 
lament in public* — Agricola, 46. 

* Si quis piorum manibus locus, si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum 
corpore extinguuntur magnae animae, placide quiescas, nosque, domum 
tuam, ab infirmo desiderio et muliebribus lamentis ad contemplationem 
virtutum tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri neque plangi fas est. 



THE AFTER LIFE 205 

A few years later a wistful note is struck in the 
charming lines in which the Emperor Hadrian ad- 
dresses his soul : 

Soul, tiny sweet and wandering, 
The body's guest and friend, 
To what strange regions dost thou tend ? 

Poor shivering naked death-pale thing, 
Now must thy wonted jestings end.^^ 

But while the Imperial sage thus mused half-play- 
fully on his soul's destiny, the soldiers of his legions 
and the officials of his provinces had alread}^ lifted the 
veil which separates the now from the hereafter. Like 
the higher creed of Christianity, for which they un- 
consciously prepared the way, the beliefs reflected on 
our stelae first gathered force among the poorer and 
humbler classes, and only penetrated by degrees to 
the upper strata of society. 

V. Excursus on the Imagery of Tombs 
IN Rome 

I should like at this point to say something, in the 
nature of a parenthesis, of a class of funerary decora- 
tion, the symbolic meaning of which has been neg- 
lected of late years, and which deserves to be studied 
anew — the paintings, namely, and the stucco deco- 
rations of the many tombs in Rome and its neigh- 
bourhood. Besides being precious reUcs of ancient 
decorative art, they are of paramount importance for 



206 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

the study of the After Life behefs of the Graeco- Roman 
world. Numbers of them were copied and engraved 
with more or less fidelity in the eighteenth century, 
by Piranesi among others, but owing to the general 
discredit attaching to Roman art during the second 
half of the nineteenth century, when the attention 
of archaeologists was concentrated on discovery in 
Greece, the paintings were allowed to fade often 
beyond recognition and the stuccoes to deteriorate. 
Others, again, were looted for the benefit of foreign 
museums and collectors, and whole tombs, which 
must have been of great beauty and interest, 
like one near the Via Flaminia and the Acqua 
Acetosa,^^ disappeared sine vestigiis. Lately, owing 
to the recent revival of interest in Roman art and 
architecture, what remains of these tombs has begun 
to attract attention once more, though too much still 
remains neglected and unrecorded. 

The best known and preserved of these tombs are 
the two on the Via Latina, dating from the second half 
of the second century.^* Both their paintings and 
stuccoes show the high level of excellence maintained 
by art in the period of the Antonines. The walls and 
the barrel-vault of the so-called Tomb of the Valerii, 
on the right of the road as we come from Rome, are 
entirely decorated with stucco, which was apparently 
left white. The decoration of the ceiling is composed 
of twenty-five circles, connected by a strip of mould- 



THE AFTER LIFE 207 

ing. Squares are placed free within each of the 
spaces thus formed, and each of the circular panels is 
adorned by some figure or group emblematic of the 
After Life. In the central compartment a veiled 
female figure rides a griffin, to symbolise the transit 
of the soul. The others are filled alternately by 
groups of Nereids riding sea-monsters, or by the rape 
of a nymph by a satyr, a subject which signifies, as 
we saw just now, the rape of the soul. The lunette 
of the central wall facing the entrance is decorated 
with an exquisite design : from a bunch of acanthus 
leaves spring fantastic tendrils, held down on either 
side by a caryatid-like figure, whose feet rest on the 
acanthus leaves. On her head she supports a rect- 
angular panel, within which dance the Seasons — the 
fleet Seasons that indicate the swift coming and going 
of all earthly life. 

The so-called Tomb of the Pancratii on the opposite 
side of the road offers a more elaborate example of 
decoration in stucco and painting, and I can only 
touch on the principal subjects of the complicated 
design. On the rectangular stucco panels of the 
ceiling are modelled the following scenes : above the 
entrance, Priam before Achilles ; to the right, Ad- 
metus, Alcestis and Pelias. Opposite the door is 
the Judgment of Paris ; on the left, the admission of 
Heracles to Olympus, where the hero celebrates his 
final victory by playing the lyre in the presence of 



208 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

Dionysus, Athena and Artemis ; while in the central 
medallion the veiled figure borne aloft by the Eagle 
symbolises the ascent of the Soul to its final Apotheosis. 
Though the two episodes from the Trojan cycle can 
scarcely be interpreted with reference to the other life, 
it is probable that like the legendary scenes depicted 
on the friezes of the Heroon at Gjolbaschi, they give 
mythical expression to traits in the character or the 
life of the deceased. If we knew more about the 
family to whom the tomb belonged we might under- 
stand why the Judgment scene that accords pre- 
eminence to Venus, mythical ancestress of the Julian 
race and tutelary goddess of Rome, was chosen to 
decorate the panel facing the entrance, or why it was 
balanced by the episode with the Ransom of Hector. 
The choice of this latter scene was perhaps influenced 
by the desire to recall in allegorical form the possession 
by the occupants of the tomb of the quality of mercy, 
which Vergil regarded as an Imperial virtue. It 
may be also that in the mystic language of the second 
century the Ransoming of Hector stands for the 
Ransoming of the Soul, and that the Judgment of 
Paris represents the choice which every mortal has 
to make on his entry into life. But I should not like 
to press the point. 

I may note briefly the subjects found in a few other 
tombs which refer to After Life beliefs. In the central 
panel of the stuccoes that adorned the ceiling of the 



THE AFTER LIFE 209 

now vanished tomb near the Acqua Acetosa were 
figures of the Dioscuri with their horses, whose mean- 
ing in the sepulchral imagery of the period we have 
already discussed. The funerary intention is here 
emphasised by the two genii in the space above the 
horses ; as on Mithraic monuments, they carry, the 
one an upright, the other an inverted torch, as symbols 
respectively of life and death. The panel in a niche 
of the left wall contained an allegory of purification 
and resurrection or re-birth ; a figure of a maiden 
holding in her hand a winnowing-fan or vannus, a 
well-known instrument and symbol of purification, 
which she partly rests on a short rectangular pillar ; 
inside the vannus, closely wrapped and veiled, we 
perceive the phallic emblem of generation and life.^^ 
In the once famous Tomb of the Arruntii, in the region 
between the Porta Maggiore and the * Minerva 
Medica,' ^^ which has now disappeared, were other 
and no less interesting decorations ; the vault was 
covered with stuccoes representing in the centre the 
Rape of the daughters of Leucippus — like other scenes 
of rape in tombs of post- Imperial date, used to sym- 
bolise the Rape of the Soul or Death as a Sacred 
Marriage — while winged genii filled the diamond- 
shaped panels on either side of the central medallion. 
Within the panels of the border we find the griffins of 
Apollo, which not only symbolise the god of light, 
but are among the fantastic animals which bear away 

o 



2IO APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

the soul to the Empyrean. Again, the subjects that 
adorn the stuccoed ceiling of the octagonal chamber 
near Tor de' Schiavi * show, in my opinion, that Piranesi 
was right in identifying this structure as a tomb,^^ 
though Canina and others have taken it to be part 
of some thermae. The design is formed by intersecting 
circles ; and in the interspaces float various winged 
creatures, which we may interpret as usual either as 
the escort of the soul, or as its means of transit to the 
upper spheres ; the winged bull is in the centre ; above 
him appears the winged sea-horse ; below the dolphin ; 
on the right a griffin and a winged lion ; on the left 
a winged boar and a winged horse.^^ 

The tomb discovered under the pontificate of 
Alexander vii. in a vigna belonging to S. Gregorio 
on the Via Appia just outside the Servian wall, must 
have offered a sort of compendium of sepulchral 
decora tion.^^ In the centre was the medallion por- 
trait of husband and wife ; at the four corners similar 
portraits of their children ; in the spaces between the 
central design and the wall a series of scenes which 
are continued in the arch above the wall-niche, and 
seem to refer to a ver sacrum ; while scattered over 
every available space is every kind of symbolic bird 
and beast. 

The Tomb of the Nasonii, on the left of the Via 
Flaminia as we go north from Rome, was a perfect 

* On the left of the Via Praenestina Antica. 



THE AFTER LIFE 211 

mine of sepulchral imagery ; but its beautiful decora- 
tion has been in part hacked away and taken to 
foreign museums, though more remains in situ than 
is usually supposed.*" Here, among the numerous 
scenes emblematic of the adventures of the soul in 
the Underworld and After Life, were the Rape of 
Persephone (now in the British Museum) ; the Rape 
of Hylas by the nymphs ; and the so-called Judgment 
of Solomon — really a Hades and Persephone enthroned 
as judges. There are charming paintings of the 
Augustan period, which retain their vivid colouring, 
within the famous Pyramid of Cestius, set up towards 
the close of the first century B.C. by one Caius Cestius 
Epulo on the Via Ostiensis, near what is now the 
Protestant cemetery ; *^ the main themes represented 
are winged figures carrying wreaths and garlands. 
Among the too little known wall-paintings of the 
Augustan columbarium in the Villa Pamphili*^ we 
see a company of the Blessed feasting in the Elysian 
fields — -eight persons seated in a half-circle in a green 
meadow ; in the midst of them is a large dish with 
eggs (as symbols of immortality), in the foreground 
a jug and a cup.* The columbarium of Pomponius 
Hylas, near the Porta Latina, is rich in expressive 
imagery. On a frieze of the central niche we see an 
episode from the legend of Orpheus (above, p. 197) ; 
on another, carried out in coloured stucco, which 

* Left of Via Aurelia Antica. 



212 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

adorns a side-niche, the underworld story of Ocnus 
and his ass.*^ Finally, we may note as worthy of 
careful study the fine stuccoes in a tomb in the Vigna 
Nardi,** a few minutes from the Porta S. Sebastiano, 
on the right of the Via Appia ; and further on, on the 
same side of the road, within a vigna belonging to 
the Trappists, a fine sepulchral chamber, which was 
excavated, I believe, as recently as 191 1. I have 
visited it twice, but cannot find that it is published. 
Among its painted decorations which are still vivid, 
we find the peacock, one of the most popular symbols 
of resurrection. By the church of S. Sebastiano 
itself is a recently discovered tomb with fine archi- 
tectural decoration.*^ If we glance through a publi- 
cation — like that of Engelmann — of ancient Roman 
paintings recorded in illuminated manuscripts, we are 
struck by the number which came from tombs that 
have now entirely disappeared. Another similar 
collection of copies of paintings has been preserved 
in the Topham volumes in the Library of Eton, and 
has just been described by the Director of the British 
School at Rome.'*^ Here again some of the most 
valuable have disappeared along with the monuments 
which they adorned. The loss of so many tombs with 
painted decoration is truly lamentable, for, besides 
the undoubted beauty of much of their art, these 
paintings are the key to the history of painting in the 
Roman Empire, and offer, as we have seen, a com- 



THE AFTER LIFE 213 

mentary of the first order on the beliefs of the Romans 
regarding the After Life. That there is a great awaken- 
ing of interest is, however, plain from the attention 
which was immediately bestowed on the curiously 
interesting paintings of the Tomb of Trebius Justus, 
discovered three years ago on the Via Latina, though 
the learned seem scarcely yet agreed as to whether 
the subjects represented are Pagan or Christian. 
A fascinating theory connects the building scene of 
one picture with the building of the walls of Rome 
under Aurelian.*' 

Sepulchral monuments of stone, though less liable 
to destruction, have likewise not been sufficiently 
studied. Let me at least call your attention to the 
Tomb of P. Vibius Marianus, popularly known as the 
Tomba di Nerone, on the left of the Via Cassia as 
we go north.*^ On the relief facing the road the 
Dioscuri are represented on each side of the inscrip- 
tion. On either side a grifiin indicates the transit of 
the soul, and in the field below a bull's head repre- 
sents the abandoned earthly tenement. 

I have said enough, I think, to show what great 
results might be obtained from a systematic publi- 
cation of the Roman tombs, and what an irreparable 
loss is inflicted upon science when they are allowed to 
deteriorate or to disappear.^'' After this excursus 
among the tombs of the Eternal City we now return 
to our northern gravestones. 



214 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

VI. Minor Symbolism of the Stelae. Scenes 
FROM Daily Life 

The minor ornament of our stelae, like their main 
decoration, is more often than not a carefully thought- 
out symbolism. We have seen how pine-cone, lion 
and snake, already familiar on Greek tombs, acquire 
fresh value on these Roman provincial stelae, under 
the influence of Mithraism and cognate Oriental re- 
ligions. The Medusa mask or Gorgoneion, perhaps 
the commonest ornament of the grave, whether alone 
or in conjunction with other symbols, retains its 
ancient function of warding off evil spirits.^" The 
cock also may often have been placed on tombs, as in 
Greece, with an apotropaic intention. Ghosts are 
as effectively scared by crowing cocks as by ringing 
bells, or baying hounds. The belief that evil spirits 
fly at cock-crow is universal : 

Ferunt vagantes daemones 

laetos tenebris noctium 

gallo canente exterritos 

sparsim timere et cedere. — Pfudentius, i. 37. 

The idea is equally familiar in our own legends and 
poetry. The dead sons of the wife of Usher's Well 
must leave her at cock-crow : 

Up then crew the red, red cock, 

And up and crew the gray ; 
The eldest to the youngest said, 

Tis time we were away.^^ 



THE AFTER LIFE 215 

Two or more fighting cocks, as on the grave of 
Nertus at Buda-Pest,^^ are sometimes explained as 
emblems of combative and watchful instincts, and 
they may also be prophylactic, but a deeper mean- 
ing than any of these attaches, as a rule, to their 
presence on later gravestones. Just as the eagle 
may originally have been looked upon as the habitat 
chosen by the soul of a dead monarch, so it has been 
pointed out that the cock might be appropriately 
regarded as embodying the soul of a departed warrior. 
It is doubtless in more than one aspect that the 
cock, like the Siren or the Harpy, makes his entry 
into sepulchral iconography. He becomes an emblem 
of Hermes psychopompos, in token of which a cock 
holding a caduceus in his beak is seen on the pedi- 
ment of the gravestone of Mussius in Turin, on the 
right of the portrait bust of the older boy.^^ But the 
great vogue of the cock on later Roman tombstones 
is due, I think, to the fact that as herald of the sun 
he becomes by an easy transition the herald of re- 
birth and resurrection. 

The dolphins and marine monsters, another fre- 
quent decoration, form a mystic escort of the dead 
to the Islands of the Blest, and at the same time carry 
with them an allusion to the purifying power of water 
and to the part assigned to the watery element in 
Mithraic and solar cults. This type of sepulchral 
decoration arises from the belief in a place of habi- 



2i6 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

tation of the dead, which the Greeks placed across the 
river Oceanus, beyond the confines of the world. The 
dead man — or his soul — might be conveyed thither 
either by boat, or on the back of a sea-monster, a 
dolphin, sea-horse, or triton. The boat was one of 
the earliest forms of transit ; it occurs in Egypt, and 
we saw it on the sarcophagus of Haghia Triada ; 
it remained emblematic of the last journey down to 
late times, and was eventually taken over into 
Christian iconography. Both boat and sea-monsters 
are commonly found on provincial tombstones, not 
unfrequently in combination ; on a stele in the 
museum of Aries, for instance, a two-oared boat, 
adorned on the prow with the effigy of a swan, is seen 
between two dolphins {C.I.L., xii. 800).^* Some- 
times there may be a doubt as to whether the boat is 
for the dead man's use in the other world, or merely 
refers to his occupation in this. On a large rect- 
angular monument at Treves a compromise of the 
two ideas is eftected : the cornice of the socle is carved 
to represent the stream of Oceanus, within which 
swim the soul's fantastic escort ; but at each side of 
the socle and upon it is placed a boat full of wine- 
casks {R.R., ii. 90, 5).^^ These boats, which are 
manned by six lusty oarsmen, certainly represent the 
trade by which the occupants of the tomb had been 
enriched. Every inhabitant of the district of the 
Mosel seems, then as now, to have been engaged 



THE AFTER LIFE 217 

either in the wine or in the cloth trade. The sculp- 
ture is by no means contemptible ; the face of the 
pilot of one boat, with its kindly, jovial expression, 
usually explained, let me add, as the effect of liberal 
draughts of excellent ' Moselle,' has long been justly 
admired. 

Far more delightful than this somewhat ornate 
monument of a pious merchant are the simple stelae 
that marked the tombs of ordinary boatmen. They 
are of frequent occurrence in lands with great rivers, 
where much of the traffic and commerce by water 
depended upon the boatmen. An excellent example 
is in the museum of Mayence, set up by a boatman of 
the Rhine, named Blussus, for himself, his wife, and 
a son {R.R., ii. 71, 1-2). The portraits of the three 
appear on the front face of the monument ; on the 
back is carved a boat manned by two oarsmen ; the 
light river craft resembles that of the Nile so closely 
that we must suppose it derived from an Egyptian 
model. Below runs the inscription which records 
the age of Blussus and the years of his service.^*^ A 
singular charm attaches to another stele, put up, as 
is recorded in the pathetic inscription, by one Marcus 
Antonius Basilides, frumentarius of the Legio X. 
Gemina, for the tomb of his wife and his infant son : 

To the holy shade of Augustania Cassia Marcia, my 
peerless wife, who lived thirty-four years eleven months 
and thirteen days, and, v/hile she fulfilled the suffering 



2i8 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

appointed for her, met life's end in the hope of better 
things : and to my innocent child, Marcus Antonius 
Augustanius Philetus, who lived three years eight months 
and ten days, and whose little life a ruthless fate, not 
heeding the prayers of his parents, took from him.* 

In the same spirit that modern Italian boatmen 
christen their craft La hella Italiana or La bella 
Genovese, Basilides has named his boat the Felix 
Itala in honour of Italy. In the Felix Itala he sits, 
facing posterity bravely in characteristic frontal 
attitude, flanked by his two mates,^' or, as Dr. Ashby 
suggests to me, it would be quite consistent with the 
spirit of the time to suppose that the three figures in 
the boat stand symbolically for Basilides and the 
wife and child he had lost. The line between reality 
and allegory is at this time elusive, and it may well 
be that the boats carved on these tombstones carry 
with them an allusion to the ship in which, sooner or 
later, all must sail to the far-away shore. Their simple 
imagery, the naive but manly language of the inscrip- 
tions, anticipate the prayer of the English poet : 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me ; 
And may there be no moaning of the bar 

When I put out to sea. 



* Die Manibus Augustianae Cassiae Marciae coniugi incomparabili 
quae vixit annos xxxiiii menses xi dies xiii, quae, dum explesset fati 
sui laborem, meliora sibi sperans vitam functa est, et Marco Antonio 



PLATE XXVIl. 




Two Family Repasts. 
Museum of Arlon. 



THE AFTER LIFE 219 

Scenes from everyday life are also found on the 
tombstones by the side of subjects which refer to the 
After Life ; they occur more especially as friezes on 
the tall pyramidal monuments of the Rhineland, the 
architecture of which is derived from that of Graeco- 
lonian prototypes, like the Mausoleum of Hali- 
carnassus and the Nereid Monument. A number of 
excellent examples may be seen in the rich museum 
of Treves. From one of them comes the well-known 
relief with a scene in a schoolroom : a bearded Greek 
pedagogue, got up to resemble the traditional philo- 
sopher, sits with a pupil at each side, while a third 
small boy enters, satchel in hand {R.R., ii. 91, i).^^ 
On another we see depicted a * Rent-day Scene,' 
where a number of sturdy farmers are paying in at a 
counter the moneys due to the ground-landlord 
{R.R., ii. 91, 2).^® The clerks who receive the money 
are dressed in a short sagum, while the farmers have 
in addition a warm hood attached to the sagum 
to draw over the head ; they carry their money-bags 
hanging from a broad strap, and hold a stout stick. 
On a third monument a frieze on the right shows the 
familiar Greek subject of a lady's toilet. The lady, 
no longer young, sits in a high wicker chair surrounded 
by her tiring-maids, one of whom holds up the mirror 

Augustanio Phileto filio innocentissimo qui vixit annos iii menses viii 
dies X, cui dii, nefandi parvulo contra votum genitorum vita privave- 
runt ; Marcus Antonius Basilides frumentarius legionis x geminae 
coniugi et Ulio pientissimis. 



220 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

to her mistress. The uncompromising reaUsm of the 
wrinkled face, the introduction of individual details, 
mark the work as distinctly Roman in spirit. Balanc- 
ing the scene from the life of the mistress of the 
house, we see on the other side the master going out 
hunting. These familiar episodes are generally ex- 
hibited — as here — on narrow friezes at the side of the 
monument ; the front is more often than not occupied 
by life-size portraits of the man and his wife, and the 
back of the tomb is often covered with patterns of 
rosettes, once brilliantly coloured. Among other 
subjects of everyday life we find the family repast, 
treated at times with Teutonic naivete (cf. R.R., ii. 
90, 2).^° The scene on the relief at Mayence has 
something of the solemn grandeur of Uhde's picture 
of ' Saying Grace ' (' Komm', Herr Jesu, sei unser 
Gast'). A delightful Family Repast occurs in the 
rich collection at Arlon (plate xxvii.=Esperandieu, 
4097). On the upper half of one face we see the 
older members of the family sitting round a table 
upon which is a trussed fowl. On the lower is the 
children's dinner : three lusty infants eating out of a 
soup tureen ; to the left an elder sister seems to repri- 
mand them for their manners ; on the right an elder 
boy plays the flute, and one of the small children 
holds back a dog who has thrust his nose into the 
soup. Sometimes the repast is treated purely as a 
genre subject ; at others it assumes the character of 



PLATE XXV III. 





THE AFTER LIFE 221 

a sepulchral banquet, influenced, no doubt, on the 
one hand by the Mithraic communion and the other 
sacred repasts which were so characteristic a feature 
of the Oriental religions ; on the other by the After 
Life Banquet which from early times had been the 
highest expression of Apotheosis. In these later 
reliefs the two ideas probably coalesce, and the ban- 
quet partakes of the nature of a communion scene 
uniting the living and the dead. 

The mention of the ritual banquet leads me to say 
a word concerning the vessels of various shapes which 
often adorn the pediments of tombs, and which are 
usually explained as conventional ornaments. The 
chief of these are the patera or sacrificial platter, the 
amphora, the krater or mixing-bowl, and the kan- 
tharos or chalice. Most of these already appeared 
with ritual significance on Greek tombs ; and to 
suppose that in centuries so charged with religious 
emotion as those we have been studying, or among a 
people so * superstitious ' as the Romans, they sud- 
denly lost all meaning and became purely decorative, 
as most modern scholars assert, seems utterly in- 
admissible. Rather do I believe that they are the 
record of the mysteries deemed most holy alike by 
the occupants of the tomb and their survivors. The 
pair of amphorae, like the twin cruets of the mass, the 
kantharos, like the Christian chalice, were emblematic 
of the mystic sacrifice and communion ; but at present 



222 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

the various utensils of the pagan mysteries have not 
been sufficiently studied. The kantharos was par- 
ticularly beloved as a motive, and when foliage or 
flowers grow out of it, it comes within the circle of 
resurrection emblems. Birds often appear drinking 
from the top of a vase, to indicate the soul's thirst 
for the ' waters of life ' ; at other times the Apolline 
griffin guards the sacred vase. Within the pediment 
of the stele of the shepherd (pecuarius) Jucundus at 
Mayence we see just such a vase, with long branches 
growing out of it and spreading to either side.^^ 
There are peculiarly good examples of this class of 
decoration on several urns in the British Museum 
{R.R., ii. 471, 5-7; 512, 4 ; 513, 8 ; 515, 4), one of 
which is reproduced here (plate xxviii. 2). 

VII. The Monument at Igel. Summary and 
Conclusion 

The splendid monument, still in situ, at Igel, near 
Treves, with all its sculptures intact, offers us in 
visible form the synthesis of the beliefs which inspired 
the hopes of an ultramundane existence lifted far 
above this present world, combined with pictures of 
the life on earth of the occupants of the tomb. This 
grand family tomb was put up in the third century 
A.D. by the Secundinii, wealthy cloth-merchants of 
the country of the Treveri. From its size, and the 
beauty both of its architecture and sculpture, it is 



PLATE XXIX. 




The Igel Monument near Tkenes. 



THE AFTER LIFE 223 

one of the most important monuments of Roman 
Germania ; it now stands in solitary grandeur in the 
charming village of Igel, beside the line of the Roman 
road from Treves to Rheims. In antiquity it was one 
of many similar monuments, which may still be 
studied in the fine drawings and reconstructions 
attempted in the museum of Treves. Their tower- 
like structures with pyramidal roofs may, like the 
tomb of S. Remy in Provence, be traced back to 
Graeco-Asiatic prototypes of the type of the Mauso- 
leum of Halicarnassus and the Lycian tombs of 
Merehi and Payava (above, p. 152). In the Gallo- 
Roman tomb, likewise, every available surface is 
covered with a profusion of carving (plate xxix.). 

As far back as 1792 the Igel tomb excited the ad- 
miration of Goethe, who saw it as he travelled from 
Treves to Luxemburg to join the allied armies ; he 
not only admired the column, but expressed a hope 
that it might be drawn and measured. More than a 
centur^^ has elapsed and Goethe's countrymen have 
not as yet adequately fulfilled his wish.^^ Both 
iconography and art throw a vivid light on the 
civilisation of this land of the Treveri with its mixed 
Ionian, Roman and Celtic elements. The pleasant 
everyday scenes of the friezes and podium reflect 
the spirit in which the Romans of all lands and 
periods loved to record their res gestae, whether public 
or private ; the principal fagade brings before us the 



224 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

picture of a Gallo-Roman family ; the rest is given up 
to the rehgious symbolism of the age, of which it is 
the splendid and convincing epitome. The inscrip- 
tion declares the tomb to have been erected, in the 
first instance, for the wife of one of the Secundinii 
and the two children of the other. The survivors 
are portrayed on the principal panel of the front face ; 
above them are three medallions with busts of the 
deceased. In the pediment, the rape of Hylas by the 
water or wood nymphs — creatures of mystery and 
terror like the noonday Pan — symbolises the rape 
of the soul through the dread powers of death. Ah 
dolor ! ibat Hylas, ihat Enhydryasin. And the further 
allusion to the Rape as prelude of the Sacred Mar- 
riage is obvious. To the right, on the large panel of 
the west face, we find two scenes from the legend of 
Perseus, {a) The liberation of Andromeda, emblematic 
of the release of the soul from its earthly chains 
through divine intervention ; it is interesting to note 
the novel motive of the half-figure of Athena, seen 
emerging from the clouds to protect the heroic deed. 
The epiphany of the goddess is represented in like 
manner on the panel with the Apotheosis of Heracles. 
{h) The scene where Perseus shows to Andromeda 
the Medusa's head reflected in the water, an allusion 
to the apotropaic power of the Gorgoneion to ward 
off evil spirits from the tomb. In the west pediment 
the story of Mars and Rhea Silvia carries, as we have 



PLATE XXX. 




Apotheosis of Heracles. 
Igel. 



THE AFTER LIFE 225 

seen, the promise of awakening from the sleep of death 
to a life of blessedness, with the further assurance 
of wedded union with the god. These scenes are 
balanced on the large panel of the east face at the 
top by the scene of Thetis dipping Achilles into the 
waters of Styx to make him invulnerable. The 
allusion to the purificatory rite of baptism, which 
was among the ideas introduced by more than one 
of the Oriental religions, is evident, yet the allusion 
to baptism by water is so rare that I think it must 
be interpreted in this case by reference to a practice 
prevalent among Teutonic and Celtic races of plung- 
ing infants into cold river water immediately after 
birth, partly for the purpose of purification, and 
partly also because water was looked upon among 
certain northern peoples as the habitat of beneficent 
powers, under whose influence it was desirable to place 
the new-born child .^^ The ritual words spoken by 
the magician in the Havamal, ' This I can make sure 
when I suffuse a man-child with water : he shall not 
fall when he fights in the host, no sword shall bring 
him low,'^* come very near indeed to the belief that 
Achilles was made invulnerable by being dipped in 
the waters of Styx. If our Treveri were among the 
Celtic tribes who used these rites to purify the new- 
born child and also to assure his immortality, we can 
see why this special scene of the ' Baptism of Achilles ' 
was chosen to adorn one face of the Igel tomb. The 

p 



226 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

lower half of this panel is unfortunately undecipher- 
able. In the pediment Luna — in Mithraic and solar 
monuments the inseparable companion of Sol Sanc- 
tissimus — drives her chariot, while Sol himself in his 
quadriga appears, as we shall immediately see, on 
the pediment of the adjoining face. On the rear wall 
of the tomb is a representation, rare at this period, of 
the Apotheosis of Heracles, who is shown in his chariot, 
mounting upwards along the path to Heaven, within 
the circle of the zodiac (plate xxx.) . Minerva no longer 
rides by the hero's side, as in earlier Greek represen- 
tations of the scene ; she emerges from the clouds 
to meet him and extends her hand to help his ascen- 
sion, a motive that recalls the hand of the Biblical 
God stretched out to the Christian emperor on later 
Roman medallions of consecration. In the spandrels 
appear the heads of the wind-gods, emblematic of the 
four cardinal points that divide the sky. The winds, 
we must remember, were likewise looked upon as 
fertilising and generative powers of Nature, and more- 
over are peculiarly in place on a funerary monument, 
since the souls of the departed might become wind- 
spirits. The allusion in the images of this panel is 
evidently to the triumphant progress of the soul after 
it has, like Heracles, accomplished its cycle of earthly 
labours. But we are no longer in presence of a Graeco- 
Latin Heracles. He has acquired an Oriental char- 
acter from being identified by the Greeks themselves 



PLATE XXXI. 




Apotheosis of a Roman Emperor. 
British Museum. 



THE AFTER LIFE 227 

with the Tyrlan Melkarth, part of whose legend he 
absorbed into his own. At Tyre, at one of the great 
festivals, this Heracles- Melkarth was burned in efhgy, 
and Sir J. G. Frazer surmises that the festival was 
identical with the ' awakening of Heracles ' held in 
January, acutely inferring that the ceremony con- 
sisted in a dramatic representation of the death of the 
god, followed by a semblance of his resurrection : *^ 
so we get back by yet another path into the same 
cycle of resurrection emblems. The splendid com- 
position of the chariot of the Apotheosis as it rushes 
upward amid the winds through the aether to the stars, 
recalls the promise of Apotheosis which that ardent 
mystic, the Emperor Julian, received from the oracle : 

Then when thou hast put off the grievous burden of 
mortal limbs, the fiery car shall bear thee through the 
midst of the eddying whirlwinds to Olympus ; and thou 
shalt come into that ancestral home of heavenly light, 
whence thou didst wander to enter the body of man. — 
Eunapius, Hist., fr. 26. 

And even more vividly does it bring to mind the 
chariot of fire and the horses of fire which parted 
disciple and master asunder, and Elijah ascending 
' by a whirlwind into heaven ' (2 Kings ii. 11). The 
chariot as vehicle of Apotheosis appears again in 
the striking scene of an ivory leaf in the British 
Museum with the deification of Constantius Chlorus, 
the father of Constantino (plate xxxi.).^® The motive 



228 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

has a long history, from the chariot borne through the 
flaming aether on the sarcophagus of Haghia Triada 
down to the time when it passes into Christian art in 
scenes with the ascension of Elijah ; but nowhere does 
it convey a more impressive sense of spiritual triumph 
than here on the monument of Igel. 

Two monuments have lately come to my notice 
which offer interesting parallels to these notable scenes 
of triumph and ascension through the cosmic universe 
to the spheres. The first is a sarcophagus of late 
second-century date long in the Palazzo Barberini 
in Rome, but so far unpublished (plate xxxii.). In the 
centre we have what at first sight seems an ordinary 
Roman medallion group {imago clipeata), but the 
medallion is itself merely a corona triumphalis decked 
out with the signs of the zodiac, so that the transit 
here again is through the celestial spheres. The 
medallion is held by two of the four Seasons arranged 
on either side of the medallion, to mark the swift 
alternations of time, while below it is a busy vin- 
taging scene with the love-gods piling up the luscious 
grapes — emblem, as so often in Christian art, of the 
vintaging of the souls. ^^ 

The next is a much humbler monument, a little 
stele lately found at Carnuntum, which tells with 
even more vivid force the same story as the more 
lavish imagery of the Roman sarcophagus. On the 
upper part of the stele within the corona triumphalis is 



PLATE XXXII. 




THE AFTER LIFE 229 

an eagle with outspread wings ; the winds occupy 
the four spandrels ; the image of Sol crowns the pedi- 
ment, within which are two dolphins. ^^ So here again 
we are confronted with the triumphant faith in the 
attainment, after purificatory rites, of a life of blessed- 
ness at harmony with the cosmic universe. 

To return to the Igel monument : in the frieze above 
the Apotheosis of Heracles a genius bridles two 
griffins, sacred to Apollo and other solar gods, a sub- 
ject peculiarly appropriate here, just below the pedi- 
ment in which the ' Giver of Life,' Sol Sanctissimus 
himself, appears in his quadriga in a time-honoured 
scheme which recalls that of the Elean phalera (plate 
V. 2) , The crown of the monument is a capital adorned 
with four heads framed by the intertwining coils of four 
snake-footed figures ; on the analogy of a fragment 
at Treves, I take it that these heads represent the 
Seasons, the anguipedes being symbolic of the earth. 
This capital supports four half-figures holding up the 
terrestrial sphere which has the oviform shape given 
to it in the Orphic cosmogony : in these figures I in- 
cline to recognise the same divisions of the day and 
night that appear on the capitals of the ' giant ' 
columns. Finally, above earth and the material 
universe, the eagle soars upward to the stars bearing 
with him Ganymede, symbol of the liberated soul. 

The picturesque scenes from daily life that enliven 
the rest of the surface need no comment here. Study, 



230 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

however, the supper scene of the central face ; no 
Dutch master could have conceived it in a spirit 
more naturalistic, and the same applies to the scenes 
at either end. On the right we are introduced to the 
kitchen where the servants are cooking or polishing 
the dishes ; on the left other servants are occupied in 
the wine-cellar. A frieze of the podium shows big 
wagons laden with goods. Evidently the commerce 
of the Secundinii spread to distant parts, for on one 
panel we see their wagons crossing a mighty range 
of mountains, perhaps intended for the Alps. On 
another frieze again is a river scene ; the boats are 
piled with bales of cloth, and are rowed by sturdy 
oarsmen. The meaning of the dolphins and other 
creatures of the deep on the upper and lower friezes 
of the podium is clear from what has already been said 
of other representations. Thus, the imagery is taken 
from the same cycle as that of the sepulchral stelae, 
but is treated with greater freedom and mastery of 
expression. The beauty of the design comes, indeed, 
as a surprise to those who think of Roman provincial 
art as decadent or worse. The exquisite putti, for 
instance, that adorn the uprights on all four sides 
would not be unworthy of a master of the Tuscan 
Quattrocento. 

I am aware that in stating this I am running 
counter to general opinion. It is the fashion to con- 
demn the art of the Igel monument. May the ex- 



THE AFTER LIFE 231 

planation attempted above of its iconography at least 
dispel the charge of ignorant vulgarity brought against 
the Secundinii by a recent writer.*^^ They may have 
shown themselves a little over-emphatic and over- 
elaborate, a little too anxious to surpass their neigh- 
bours alike in the expression of their piety and in the 
record of their commerce. But the eagle, which to 
those who overlook the Ganymede represents only the 
vulgar ambition of a nSgociant proprietaire to appro- 
priate to himself ' the emblem of military force and 
of armed victory,' shows at least that the Secundinii 
believed in a world beyond, where they too might be 
liberated from their earthly cares. In these reliefs 
the wish for personal fame, perhaps also for individual 
survival, seems satisfied by those simple scenes which 
record the successful earthly career of the deceased. 
The carved panels and the statuary that adorns the 
more important parts of the edifice seem rather to 
proclaim joy in the soul's release from the shackling 
forces of the flesh and of personality. The awfia <TTjij,a 
doctrine seems here to have attained its apogee. 
We are already within measurable distance of the 
faith that inspires the New Mysticism : 

Ici commence la pleine mer, ici commence I'admirable 
aventure, la seule qui soit egale a la curiosite humaine, la 
seule qui s'eleve aussi haut que son plus haut desir. 

We have travelled far from the primitive tomb- 
stones set up with magical intention to entrap the 



232 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

ghost. The dead man no longer lives in an obscure, 
uncertain region, propitiated by acts of adoration 
born of fear. Magic had sought to imprison the soul ; 
religion had effected her liberation and sent her soaring 
above the earth into the radiant spaces of heaven. 
A new era was to bring with it a still higher revelation 
of the soul's exalted destiny, but we have reached the 
goal of our present studies, and it is well to close 
them upon the vision of what Rome, by holding to 
spiritual ideals all but repudiated by classic Greece, 
contributed towards the emancipation of mankind 
from the haunting fear of death. 



NOTES 



PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS 

A.J. A. : American Journal of Archaeology. 

Aphaia : Furtwangler, Aegina das HeiUgthum der Aphaia. 

Arch. Anz. : Archdologischer Anseiger {^I'^^G.B.rs at end oi Jahrbuch). 

Ath. Mitt. : Athenische Mitteilungen. 

B.C. II. : Bulletin de Correspondance Hell^nique. 

B.S.R, : Papers of the British School at Rome. 

B.Z. : Byzantinische Zeitschrift. 

C.I.L. : Corpus Inscriptionuin Latinarum. 

E.R.E. : Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. 

Esperandieu : E. Espdrandieu, Bas-Reliefs de la Gaule Romaine. 

Helbig : W. Helbig, Fiihrer durch die Oeffentlichen Sammlungen 

Klassischer Altertiimer in Rom, 3rd ed., 191 2, 1913, 2 vols. 
Jahrb. : Jahrbuch des K. Deutschen archdologischen Instituts. 
J.H.S. : Journal of Hellenic Studies. 
J.R.S. : Journal of RojJian Studies. 
R.A. : Revue ArcMologique. 
R.H.R. : Revue de PHistoire des Religiofts. 
R,M. : Roemische Mitteilungen.. 
R.R. : Reinach, Repertoire des Reliefs Grecs et Remains, 3 vols. 



NOTES 

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 

^ Strzygovvski's theories up to the year 1907 are summed up in the 
Introduction to my Roman Sculpture, pp. 12 fif. with references. In the 
intervening seven years his activity has been unremitting. His most 
important recent work is ^oss\h\y Amida (Heidelberg, 1910), written in 
collaboration with Professor von Berchem and Miss Gertrude Bell. In 
it he discusses afresh the Oriental origin of all mediaeval European art. 
The preface is of special importance, as aifording the author's review 
of his own work since 1885, in which he shows how his studies took 
him from Italy to Constantinople and Asia Minor, and thence to 
Persia and the further East. Strzygowski's recent attacks are mainly 
directed against the school represented by Professor Heisenberg, 
who look upon Byzantium as the direct heir of Greece, and more 
especially of Athens. See Strzygowski's last article in Supplement 
Band xix. (191 3) of the Rihnische QuartalscJirift, and his numerous 
articles and notices in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift. His views 
largely colour the important book of Oskar Wulff, AltchristUche und 
Byzantinische Kunst (vol. i. 191 3); cf. also L. Brehier, 'Etudes sur 
I'histoire de la Sculpture Byzantine,' in Nouvelles Missions Scienti- 
figues, 191 1. 

^ In the article 'AltchristUche Kunst,' contributed to vol. i. of the 
handbook Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenivart (1908). 

2 This was the view of Wickhoft" in the epoch-making monograph 
translated into English under the title Rofnan Art{igoi). In the text 
oi Rojnan Sculpture (1907) I showed reason for modifying this view, 
though the opening lines of the preface might lead to the supposition 
that I adhered to it. 

* The relation of Chateau Gaillard to Syrian models is well known, 
but students will do well to read the inspiring article of M. Dieulafoy 

236 



236 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

in Mdmoires de VlnsHtut de France, 1898 (vol. 36), pp. 325-86, 
'Le Chateau Gaillard et I'architecture militaire au Xlllme Si&cle,' a 
masterly handling of the question of the debt of Western Europe to 
Eastern art in the Middle Ages. 

^ Palace and Mosque of Ukhaidir, by G. Lowthian Bell, 1914. See 
also the following passages, pp. 72 ffi, no, 128, on the debt of Eastern 
to Roman architecture. 

6 E. March-Phillips, The Works of Man, pp. 131 ff. This high- 
handed abuse of Rome seems 'opportune and refreshing' to the 
anonymous r&vie.\y&rinfournaI of Helleftic Studies, 1912 (xxii.), p. 202. 
A similar alternately violent and ' saucy ' style of writing spoils a far 
more important book. Art, by Clive Bell (1914)- Mr. Bell certainly 
puts his finger on the weak spot of Greek art from the Parthenon 
downward and in Hellenistic and Roman times, but he fails to see 
that what he so justly and eloquently praises in Byzantinism (see Art, 
pp. 121 fif.) begins in the early Empire ; is, in fact, the ' ascending line ' 
which, as Riegl first perceived, makes its appearance in Rome by the 
side of decadent Hellenism. 

^ A Wandering Scholar in the Levant, 1896, p. 163. 

* W. R. Lethaby in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries oj 
London, 1912 (xxiv.), p. 293 ; cf Strzygowski in Byzantinische Zeit- 
schrift, 1913 (xxii.), p. 624. 

^ Cf. Professor Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 
p. 108 : ' Rome herself was a Polis as well as an Empire. And 
Professor Haverfield has pointed out that a City has more chance of 
taking in the whole world to its freedoms and privileges than a Nation 
has of making men of alien birth its compatriots.' Cf. also the 
brilliant appreciation of the Roman Empire and of its policy by 
Professor Lake, The Steivardship of Faith, pp. 8 ff. 

'■^ R. W. Livingstone, The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us, 
1912, p. lOI. 

^^ Cf. T. R. Glover, Conflict of Religions, pp. 28 ff. : ' No Roman poet 
had a more gentle, sympathetic love of Nature ; none ever entered so 
deeply and so tenderly into the sorrows of men.' For Vergil's religious 
feeling and its exalted character see also Ferdinand Postma, De 
numine divifio quid senserit Vi?gilius, Amsterdam, 19 14. 

" See Wickhoff, Roman Art, p. 45. 



NOTES 237 

^^ Mr. J. W, Mackail, in his article 'Virgil and Roman Studies' in 
J.R.S., 1913 (iii.), pp. I ff., brings out with his usual vivid touch 
this aspect of the poet. See especially p. 2 : ' So, too, with Virgil. 
Admiration of his poetical genius is only heightened by the fuller 
knowledge we are gaining of him as the voice and interpreter of the 
Latin civilisation in all its aspects. We no longer study him as mere 
literature ; or rather literature, with him, as with others, has grown 
into a new meaning. It is not a picture drawn and coloured on the 
flat, but an organic solid, attached everywhere to a three-dimensional 
world. At every point Virgil's work throws light on Roman studies, 
and has light thrown on it by them. The beautiful pattern, with 
which we have long been familiar, becomes stereoscopic ; the polished 
reflecting surface becomes translucent. We see deep into its structure, 
and have always the hope of seeing deeper ; we can trace layers of 
growth ; here and there we can watch the poetry coming into 
existence. And as we do so, point after point in the poetry kindles 
into new meaning, because it is seen in organic relation to an actual 
world.' 

1* J. W. Mackail, Latitt Literature, p. 99. 

^" Gilbert Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, 2nd ed., pp. 113 fF. 

" See, for instance, Mr. Warde-Fowler, Rome, p. 7 ; and even 
Professor Haverfield, Romanization of Roman Britain, 2nd ed., p. 9. 



LECTURE I 

1 The so-called 'law of frontality' was first put forward by the 
Danish sculptor Julius Lange in his epoch-making book, Darstellung 
des Menschen in der dlteren griechischen Kunst (German ed. with a 
preface by A. Furtwangler, and a summary of the views in French, 
Strassburg, 1899). But what Lange christens 'frontality' involves a 
great deal beside the frontal pose. Accordingly E. Loewy, in his 
Rendering of Nature in Early Greek Art (English tr. by J. S. 
Fothergill, London, 1908), substituted the term iinifaciality for 
frontality. For a useful resume of Lange's and Loewy's views see 
P. Gardner, Principles of Greek Art (ed. 1914), ch. vii. 

2 Strictly speaking, the frontal pose of primitive art is restricted to 
statues in the round, while in relief the difficulty of drawing or carving 
figures and, above all, faces on a background, led to the adoption of 
the profile view. But the profile poses are stiff, and the figures in 



238 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

relief are subject to the law of parallelism which flows from that of 
frontality, and deprives them of any real mobility. 

^ Alessandro della Seta, Art and Religion, London, 1914. His 
earlier monograph, La Genesi dello Scorcio nclP arte Graeca, 1907, 
should be read by those interested in the technical processes by which 
the Greeks liberated themselves from the yoke of frontality (for which 
della Seta substitutes the expression parallelism) by the discovery of 
foreshortening, which enabled them to interrelate the various actions 
in a scene. 

* A. L. Frothingham in American Journal of Archaeology, 191 2 
(xvi.), pp. 368 ff. ; 1913 (xvii.), pp. 487 ff. ('Who built the Arch of 
Constantine?')- 

^ E. Strong, Roman Sculpture, pp. 328 ff. A good description of the 
reliefs of the arch, and of their relation to those in the contemporary 
arch of Galerius at Saloniki, by O. Wulff, Altchristliche Kunst, 
pp. 160 ff. 

^ A. J. B. Wace in B.S.R., iv. pp. 270 fif., pis. xxxv., xxxvi. (plate iii. 
by permission after his pi. xxvi.). But I see no reason for thinking 
that the figures of the north and south sides do not belong to the 
same period. The differences of technique are not greater than can be 
accounted for by the employment of more than one sculptor. 

^ Alois Riegl, Die Spiitrlimische Kunstindustric in Oesterreich- 
Ungarn, Vienna, 1901. 

* For both S. Trophime and Chartres see P. de Lasteyrie's mono- 
graph in Monuments Plot, 1902 (viii.), 'Etude sur la Sculpture 
Fran<;aise au Moyen Age'; plate iv. is after his plate iii., 'Tympan 
de la Porte Centrale de la Facade Royale.' 

^ Maiestas Christi — the name given to the scheme which shows 
the Christ as here enthroned within the mandorla. According to 
Strzygowski and Lethaby the type of the Maiestas Christi is of 
Egyptian origin. The mandorla 'encloses the figure of the infant 
Christ in his mother's arms in the Gospels of Etchmiadzin and in 
frescoes at Bawit ' (Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology, 191 1, 
p. 683 and references). 

^'^ I find myself paraphrasing here a sentence from Winoton 
Churchill's novel. Inside the Cup, p. 62. The passage in which the 
American writer describes what the effect would be upon the 
Christian conception of the Christ were a natural instead of a 



NOTES 239 

supernatural birth attributed to Him, almost exactly expresses what 
happens when the image of the divinity, instead of being shown 
independent of any relation to other figures or objects, is made to 
participate in a common action : ' If we attribute to our Lord a 
natural birth, we come at once to the dilemma of having to admit 
that He was merely an individual human person — in an unsurpassed 
relationship with God, it is true, but still a human person. That 
doctrine makes Christ historical, some one to go back to, instead of 
the independent pre-existent Son of God and mankind.' 

^' The sculptures were discovered in the spring of igio, south of the 
town of Corfu, near the convent of Garitza, during excavations begun 
by the Archaeological Society of Athens and continued by the 
German Emperor. The relief is very flat ; the style is non-Attic and 
recalls Sicilian (Selinos) rather than Greek sculpture. Published 
Praktika, 191 1; cf. Arch. Anz., 191 1, p. 135; 1912, p. 247; 1913, 
p. 106 ; P. Gardner, Principles of Greek Art (1914), p. 122. 
Several architectural fragments of the temple were also found, as 
well as a long altar adorned with a frieze of metopes and triglyphs 
that stood in front of the temple. The pedimental fragments are now 
in the local museum at Corfu. For the reconstruction of the pediment 
see Sir Arthur Evans mJ.H.S., 191 2, p. 286, fig. 2 {Addenda). 

12 On the apotropaic character of the Gorgon, and on the probable 
derivation of the whole group with its flanking lions from a Hittite 
model, see Ed. Meyer, Reich tind Kiiltur der Chetiter., 19^4) P- 113, 
with note and fig. 83. Sir Arthur Evans {loc. cit.\ on the other hand, 
inclines to derive the type from Cretan art. 

13 Delia Seta, figs. 67, 68. 

1^' Loe\vy, Rendering of Nature., fig. 19. 

1-^ The most important discussion of Greek pedimental construction 
is Furtwangler's in Aegina das Heiligtuvi der Aphaia., pp. 316-41. 
Cf. my paper \n Journal of the Brit, and Anicr. Society of Rome, 19 10,- 
IV. p. 395. 

i« A. B. Cook, Zeus, 1914, pp. 293 ff. and notes, explains the partiality 
of early Greek sculpture for fish-tailed and snaky monsters to fill up the 
angles of pediments, by supposing that they were originally used to 
guard the apotropaic solar symbol which was so frequently placed 
in the centre of pediments, or above the gable as acroterion. See the 
examples given by Mr. Cook, figs. 212-18. For the Acropohs pedi- 
ments see G. Dickins, Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum, 19 12, 
Nos. 35 ff". 



240 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

^^ Furtwangler, Aphaia^ fig. 254. 

1^ Furtwangler, Aphaia^ plates 104, 105 (for the general effect of 
the two compositions). 

1" Furtwangler, Aphaia, figs. 259-61. 

"''^ It is important to study the correct reconstruction which brings 
the Peirithoos and the Theseus close to the Apollo. Although both 
figures move away from the centre and from the god, the lines are so 
arranged as to link centre and lateral groups together. For the two 
Olympia pediments, see Apkaia, figs. 262-3. 

2' Furtwangler, Aphaia, figs. 265-7. 

^* Four Stages of Greek Religion^ p. go. 

"^ Both are self-involved compositions. The Hermes is lost in 
sensuous dreams, and the Demeter in her grief. Neither statue is 
conceived in relation to the spectator. 

-■* Principles^ p. 118. 

2^ To Greek archaeologists, and indeed to many others, those 
statements will appear pure heresies. Dr. Deissmann, for instance, 
who shows a deep feeling for art, says of the Eleusis relief that it is 
' the most deeply religious work of ancient sculpture ' which he has 
ever seen {Light from the Ancient East^ p. 286). 

2'* Furtwangler-Reichold, Griechische Vasennialerei, i. pi. 36. 

2^ We might judge differently of the principles which govern 
Greek composition if we knew more of the art of Asia Minor. For 
instance, the pedimental sculptures of the so-called Monument of 
the Nereids from Xanthos (Brit. Mus.), clumsy though they are in 
certain respects, show a finer sense of centripetal construction than 
most of the pediments found in Greece. The reason for this is the 
nature of the subject. The dead of the central group — a man and 
his wife with their children — are still imagined as beings of a 
superior order, as enjoying a state something between the human 
and the divine. Hence the tendency, not altogether neutralised by 
the obvious Attic influences, of placing the images of the dead in an 
attitude suggestive of them as recipients of homage. The poses are 
not frontal, it is true, but the lines flow towards the centre, focus 
the attention at that point, and lead one to look there for the 
dominant motive of the composition. 

^^ Diodorus Siculus, xviii. 26, 27. 



NOTES 241 

^' According to a recent theory the lustratio exercitiis represented 
is presumably that performed in B.C. 115 by an ancestor of Domitius 
(see Sieveking in the Austrian Archaeological y(a:.'^r^i-/^i?/if^, 1910, xiii. 
pp. 95 ff. ; 'das sogenannte Altar des Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus '). 
If that is the case, the instance is almost unique, for the Romans 
had no historical art in our modern sense, i.e.^ as I have already 
pointed out in Roinan Sculpture^ p. 38, they hand down their present 
deeds, their res gestae^ for the admiration of the future, but rarely 
search the past for those of their ancestors. 

^^ I had discussed the problem of the introduction of the crowd 
into Roman relief, Roman Sculpture^ pp. 46 ff. Delia Seta {pp. cit., p. 
278) says further : ' The problem had not yet been propounded in the 
case of the altar of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, for the figures, though 
placed singly facing the spectator, do not form a compact mass, but 
are distinctly separated from one another against the background. 
This had already been indicated ... on the Ara Pacis . . . for some 
of the figures of the cortege, who, instead of moving like the rest, 
seem to have stopped, as if to be better in view of the spectator.' 

^^ See my Roman Sculpture, p. 57, and the remark quoted from 
Riegl. 

^2 ' L'aigle funeraire des Syriens et I'Apotheose des Empereurs,' in 
Revue de Vhistoire des Religions, 19 10 (Ixii.), pp. 119-64. 

^^ For the Imperial Apotheosis and cognate cults see art. ' Apotheose' 
by Gaston Boissier in Saglio's Diet., and also the chapter in his 
Religion Romaine dAuguste aux Antonins {■p'p. 122-208); W. Drex- 
ler's art. ' Kaiserkultus ' in Roscher ; arts. ' Apotheose ' by H. von 
Gaertringen, and ' Consecratio ' by G. Wissowa, both in Pauly- 
Wissowa ; art. ' Deification ' by E. Bevan, in Hastings' Encyclopaedia 
of Religion attd Ethics ; Kornemann, Zur Geschichte der Antiken 
Herrscherkulte, in Klio, 1901 (i.), pp. 51-146 (§ 3, 'Die romische 
Staatskulte der Kaiserzeit,' etc.) ; L. Purser's art. in Smith's Diet, 
of Ant. (a competent resujne of facts and theories) ; Marquardt, 
Siaatsverwaltung, iii. pp. 91 ff. ; pp. 463 ff., pp. 275 ff. {consecratio) ; 
V. Ga.rdtha.usen, Augustus und seine Zeit, i. pp. 466 ff. ; J. Toutain, ch. 
iii. o{ Les Cultes paiens dans P Empire Romain; C. Pascal, Credenze 
dOltretombe, ch. xxv. E. Beurlier's Le Culte Impirial {iZZ\) is still 
the most complete work on the subject. The entire documentary 
evidence for the Imperial Deification between the years 48 B.C. and 
14 A.D. has lately been brought together in chronological order by 
Hubert Heinen in Klio, 191 1 (xi.), pp. 129 ff. ('Zur Begriindung des 
romischen Kaiserkultes '). Paul Wendland's Hellenistische-rbmische 



242 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

Kultur, 1912 (sections ' Kaiserkult,' 'Sinn der Apotheose,' and the 
preceding sections on the temples of the Augustan age), contains the 
most illuminating pages that have yet been written on the Augustan 
period, its aspirations and cults. See also Warde-Fowler, Roman 
Ideas of Deity (Lecture v., 'Deification of Caesar '^ — the preceding 
chapter on the ' Idea of the Man-God ') ; and O. Gruppe, Griechische 
Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, ii. pp. 1503 ff. Professor Ad. 
Deissmann's estimate of the antagonism of the early Christians to the 
Deification of the Caesars should likewise be read {Light from the 
Ancient East, 19 10, pp. 344 ff.). 

^* For Caesar's policy and desires in the direction of Apotheosis see 
Kornemann, op. cit., p. 95 ; Teney Frank, Roma7i Imperialism, p. 342. 
Mr. Warde-Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 113, seems to consider 
Caesar to have been indifferent to the idea of his own Deification. 

^^ The idea of the King-God developing as it did out of that of the 
Man-God, long proved equally repugnant to writers of the most diver- 
gent opinions — all of them apt, till lately, to stigmatise the cult of the 
ruler as gross idolatry or degrading servility, or else to sneer at it in 
the spirit of Seneca's spiteful satire on the Deification of Claudius. 
Christian writers naturally inherited the antipathy to the Imperial 
cult felt by the early Christians, who in this were probably also 
influenced by the monotheism of the Jews (see Ad. Deissmann, loc. 
cit.\ while writers of a freethinking stamp condemned it along with 
every other form of ritual. Of late years, however, a growing know- 
ledge of the religious and political spirit which gave rise to the cult 
has issued in a saner view. ' Time,' says Professor Wight Duff, in 
a fine page on Augustan Imperialism, 'placed Augustus among the 
greater public divinities, and Caesar-worship attained a universality 
which prepared a way for the ultimate predominance of Christianity ' 
{Literary History of Rome, p. 525). Mr. Warde-Fowler, who owns 
that Emperor- worship, as equivalent to ' worship of a man,' was at one 
time abhorrent to him, handles the subject with sympathy and toler- 
ance, and goes so far as to admit that ' its contribution to the idea of 
deity was wholesome rather than the contrary ' {Roman Ideas of Deity, 
pp. 123 ff.). Dr. Farnell (art. 'Greek Religion' in E.R.E.) says, in 
alluding to the deification of great men generally, that ' for better, for 
worse, it was a momentous fact belonging to the higher history of 
European religion ; for it familiarised theGraeco-Roman world with 
the idea of the incarnation of the Man-God.' Professor G. Murray like- 
wise, while condemning with characteristic vehemence the ' worship 
of the Man-God with its diseased atmosphere of megalomania and 
blood-lust,' in his discussion of Hellenistic deification points to the 



NOTES 243 

inspiring character of the ' potential divinity of man ' {Four Stages of 
Greek Religion, pp. 82, 139). Finally, two American historians, 
Professor Scott Fergxisson in his Greek hnpen'alism (1913) and 
Professor Teney Frank in his Roman hnperialis^n (1914), show a far- 
seeing appreciation of the aims and motives which were at the root 
of both Hellenistic and Roman Apotheosis. The Hellenistic cult of 
the ruler is treated by J. Kaerst in an Appendix to vol. ii. pt. i. (1909) 
of Das Hellenistische Zeiialter, p. 374. 

^ For the derivation of the Imperial Apotheosis from the Hellen- 
istic cult of the ruler, and for the influence upon the Imperial cult of 
the form of monarchy introduced by Alexander, see J. Kaerst, Studien 
2ur Entwickelung unci theoretischen Begriindung der Monarchie im 
Altertum, 1898, ch. v. pp. 80-102 ('das romische Kaisertum') ; p. 90 
for the Augustan Apotheosis. 

^^ See Seneca, Epist., 108, 34. 

^ Cicero, letter to Atticus, xii. 36. 

39 At the end of the De Republica. 

^ Plutarch, Vita Flaminini, ch. xvi. 

*^ Anthologia Palatina, ix. 402 (epigram attributed to the Emperor 
Hadrian). 

*2 Letter to Atticus, v. 21. Cf. the passage In the famous letter to 
his brother Quintus {ad Quint, fratr., i. i. 26) written ten years earlier. 

*2 Cicero, Verres, ii. 21, § 52 2indi passim. 

^ C.I.G., 2927, 2369, etc.; Boissier, Religion Romaifte, i. p. 121. 

*^ On the triumphator, see Eisler, Weltemnantel und Himmelzelt, 
p. 40 ; cf J. G. Frazer, Early History of the Kingship, 1906, pp, 
198 ff. 

*^ On the chariot of the triumphator —Xh^ chariot of Sol, see 
p. 168. 

*^ J. M. Cornford, in From Religion to Philosophy, p. 162. 

^^ Cumont, E aigle funeraire, p. 157. 

*9 Furtwangler, Antike Gemmen, iii. p. 324, fig. 168. 

*" Indian sardonyx, worked in very low relief, as a rule in three 
layers and sometimes five. The most general view is that it com- 



244 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

memorated the departure of Germanicus in A.D. 17 on the Parthian 
expedition. The figure facing Tiberius is explained as Germanicus 
between his mother Antonia (for whom the figure appears too young ; 
it is more probably an allegory) and his wife Vipsania Agrippina with 
the boy Caligula. The group on the right is interpreted as Drusus 
Minor, son of Tiberius, with his wife Drusilla. Of the deified princes 
to either side of Augustus, the one riding the winged horse is probably 
Marcellus, the other Drusus Major. Tiberius holds the augural 
staff to indicate that the campaign is entered upon under his aicspicia 
(Stuart- Jones, Companio7t, p. 426 ; Strong, Roman Sculpture^ pp. 89 fif.). 

^^ Cumont, op. cit.^ p. 152. 

^^ Some editions prefer to read bibet ; but does the present bibit really 
strike a false note, as maintained by Mr. Warde-Fowler {Roman Ideas 
of Deity., pp. 128, 152, etc.)? 

^^ J. Kaerst {Studien, p. 88) seems, however, to date the worship of 
the living Emperor from Augustus, and to consider that Augustus 
was actually worshipped under the name of different gods (cf Gardt- 
hausen, Augustus, i. p. 885 and ii. pp. 517 ff.). 

^* Temple of Ancyra, C.I.G., 4039. Temples at Pergamon and 
Nicomedia, Dio Cassius, 51, 20. For the ara in Lyons, see C.I.L., 
xiii. p. 227. On the cult of Roma and Augustus, see Kornemann, 
op. cif., p. 99, and the numerous examples given by Marquardt, 
Siaatsverwaltiing, iii. p. 464, note 4. On the cult of Rome before 
the Empire, see Warde-Fowler, op. cit.., pp. 129 fif. The oldest instances 
seem to be at Smyrna as far back as 195 B.C. {Porcio consule, 
Tac, Ann., iv. 56). 

^5 On this episode, see the comments of Warde-Fowler, Roman 
Ideas of Deity (1914), P- 87. 

^^ Arabian sardonyx. The scene is generally referred to the 
Pannonian triumph of Tiberius in A.D. 12, when, before ascending the 
Capitol, he alighted from his car to do homage to Augustus. To the 
right of the car stands Germanicus, the adopted son of Tiberius, who 
shared in the glory of the Pannonian exploit. (Suetonius, Tiberius, 20 ; 
Gardthausen, Augustus, i. p. 1228 ; Stuart-Jones, Companion, p. 424 ; 
Strong, Roman Sculpture, pp. 88 ff.) 

^" The frequent use of this emblem is clear evidence of the 
astrological leanings of the Emperor, who, like Tiberius, was versed 
in the occult sciences. The Capricorn appears on the reverse of 
the gold coins of Augustus inscribed signis receptis ; see Gabrici, 
' Numismatica di Agusto,' in Milani's Studi e Materiali, ii. p. 151, fig. i. 



NOTES 245 

^^ Roman Sculpture^ plates xxvii., xxviii. ; R.R.^ i. 93-96. 

^^ Warde-Fowler, op. cit, p. 143. 

'^ See on all this P. Wendland, op. cit., pp. 142 ff. 

*^ See Wight Duff, Literary History of Rotne, pp. 524 ff. 

®^ E.g. Warde-Fowler, op. cit.., p. 136, asserts that in Rome 
' worship had not . . . the advantage of being combined with a 
genuine feeling for the plastic arts.' On what evidence does the same 
writer tell us of the sculptures of the Ara Pacis and the corslet of the 
Prima Porta Augustus, that these would not ' have been religiously 
impressive for the beholders, as well as interesting to the sculptor and 
his employer' {op. cit.., p. 138)? 

^^ A curious example of the influence of the stiff Roman grave 
portraiture on Imperial art may be seen in the large cameo let into 
a book now in the Library at Treves (Furtwangler, Antike Gemtnen, 
iii. p. 323, fig. 167), showing an Emperor of the first century — possibly 
Claudius — and his family, facing frontally and tightly packed side by 
side as on a tombstone of the Via Appia. 

** In the archaic period the pediment was left open, but figures or 
groups adorned its upper cornice. An interesting series of figures of 
warriors now scattered between Berlin and Copenhagen survives 
from an early temple at Cervetri. It is interesting to note that the 
central warrior, who stood over the apex, is placed with the torso 
turned frontally, though his legs appear in profile in order doubtless 
to unite him, partially at least, with the rest of the composition. For 
the figures, see Arndt, Glyptothek Ny Carlsberg., plate 171 ; and 
Wiegand, 'Terres Cuites Architecturales d'ltalie' (in Arndt's text). 

^^ The terra-cottas from the Faliscan temples are in the museum of 
the Villa Giulia. See my article in Journal ofRofnan Studies, 1915, v. 

^^ L. Milani, Museo Archeologico di Firettse, 1912, plate c. 

^'' Better seen in Roman Sculpture, plate xliii. (after Petersen's 
Ara Pacis), where the modern pieces of the sides are omitted. 

^® Roman Sculpture, plate x., fragment on right. 

^^ W. Amelung, Filhrer durch die Antiken in Florenz, No. 99 ; 
Alinari photo, 1163. 

"^^ Burlington Magazine, June, 1914. 



246 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

'^^ Lucan's exhortation to Nero to fix his seat hereafter in the 
precise middle of the sky, assuring him that otherwise he will upset the 
equilibrium of the heavens {de Bella Civili, i. 45 fif.), reads now like 
fulsome flattery, but as a fact it probably reflects current belief as to 
the place assigned to the deified Emperor in the cosmic system. 
Likewise when Gains and Nero were adored in the East as the New 
Sun, or when Nero is said to have introduced the radiate crown, 
derived through Hellenistic monarchs from Eastern sun-worship, they 
were but developing the religious policy of Augustus, who, if not yet 
exactly identified with the Sun, was, as Wendland {op. cit, p. 147) points 
out, considered as endowed with parallel power (see what has been 
said above of the scene of Apotheosis on the Vatican altar of the Lares); 
Horace, Odes, iv. 5, 5 : Lucem redde litae, dux bone, patriae, etc. ; 
cf. i. 12, 46. Cumont, in commenting on the passage of Lucan cited 
above, and on the similar praises bestowed by Statins on Domitian, 
denies that they are mere flatteries : ' Non ; les rites et les representa- 
tions de I'apotheose prouvent que les louanges des poetes expriment 
tres exactement les croyances du culte Imperial. Cest fnoins de leur 
part de P adulation que de r adoration {Uaigle funeraire, p. 156). 

72 Eckhel, D.N., vi. 278. 

7^ The identification is, I believe, due to Mr. H. Stuart-Jones ; for 
the relief, see his Companion, plate 1. It was published by E. Michon 
in Monu77ients et Metnoires, 1909 (xvii.), plate xvii. 

"'^ Roman Sculpture, plate Ixiii. 

'^^ Domascewski in the Austrian Jahreshefte, 1899 (ii.), pp. 173 ff. 
See my Roman Sculpture, pp. i\\fi.. For monotheism and Jupiter 
in Vergil, see F. Postma, p. 153 of the monograph cited, n. 11. 

''^ Roman Sculpture, plate Ixxi. 2. On coins, Sabina, and likewise 
Faustina, are represented borne upward by the eagle or by the peacock, 
against a stellated mantle which represents the starry firmament, and 
also perhaps carries with it the notion of a vehicle of Apotheosis 
(see Lecture II., p. 177). The two types of coins are shown on 
plate ix. 2. 

"* Roman Sculpture, plate Ixxiii. and p. 216. 

''^ The identification of the winged figure as the Aion is due to 
L. Deubner, Rom. MittJi., 191 2 (xxvii.). The Aion carries in his hand 
the orb or globe encircled by the zodiac, and with the snake as 
symbol of Eternity. 

7^ Roman Sculpture, plate Ixxxix. 



NOTES 247 

*" Cf. F. Cumont, L'aigle funeraire, p. 155. 

*^ This important document has been published by Kornemann, 
Klio, 1907 (vii.), pp. 278 ff. (Papyrus Gissensis 20) ; the opening lines 
are specially interesting in the present context. 

apfjiUTi \evKOTra)X(o apn T paiav\Sii\ 
(TvvavaTeikas ^kco croi^ a 8rjiJ.[^e\ , 
ovK ayvcocTTOs ^ol^os Qeos ava- 
KTa Kaivov 'Khpiavov dyye'XX[Q)j/] 
hi TTCLVTa hovka[hX\ dpeTTjV K[aY\ 
Trarpbs TV)(rjf Oeov ^aipovres. 

As Kornemann (p. 280) suggests, it is evident that Apollo has mounted 
to heaven with Trajan on the Sun chariot, and then himself announces 
Hadrian's accession to the throne. The idea is the same as on the 
Vatican altar with the Apotheosis of Caesar. 

*2 Ro7nan Sculpture, plate xciv. and p. 308 ; the identification is 
Studniczka's. The same stone guarded by the Imperial eagle appears 
enthroned in solitary splendour on a chariot guided by a star as 
solar emblem on the reverse of coins of Elagabalus (Cohen, iv. 
p. 240). 

*^ Riegl, Spdtromische Kunstmdustrie, p. 81, with illustration ; 
Thedenat, le Forum Romain, pp. 262 ff. ; Huelsen, The Roman 
Forum, 2nd ed., pp. 98 ff. It is also illustrated by von Sybel, Christ- 
liche Antike, ii. fig. 20. For the interpretation of the relief as a 
sacrifice in honour of Mithras, see Frothingham in A.J.A., 1914, 
pp. 146 ff. 

** See Cumont, Mysteries of Mithras, pp. 209 ff. 

^^ Reproduced by Koepp, Die Rotner in Deictschland, 2nd ed., 1912, 
p. 141, fig. 112. 

** Venturi, Storia delP Arte Italiana, i. p. 54- 

*'^ Roman Sculpture, pp. 151 ff. and plate xlv. I now find a 
further confirmation for the Domitianic date from the affinities of 
style between these reliefs and the friezes of Domitian's Forum of 
Minerva ; it is a point I discuss in my new book on Art in the 
Roman Empire. Huelsen's idea (Rofuan Forum, 2nd ed., p. 104), 
that these reliefs were once introduced into the balustrade of the 
rostra, now seems to me untenable. Dr. Carter has shown that the 
background is continuous from one relief to the other, and this fact, 
together with the arrangement of the animals on the front face — 



248 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

placed as if moving towards one another and towards the same 
point — tends to show that they were simply placed on each side of 
the entrance to some sacred enclosure {A.J.A., 1910, xiv. pp. 310 fF.). 
I should like to suggest tentatively that this was the space surrounding 
the equestrian statue of Domitian near to the site of which the reliefs 
were found. The mutilation of the head of the Emperor is one point 
in favour of this view ; and the background of notable buildings seems 
in the spirit of Statius, Silvae, i. pp. 22 fif. (for Carter's view see op. cit, 
P- 317)- 

** O. WulfF, Altchristliche und Bysantinische Kunst, i. pp. 160 ff. 

^^ This is a characteristic of later Roman architecture which has 
been often dwelt upon. See H. Stuart-Jones in Quarterly Review for 
January 1905, pp. 136 ff. 

^ For this class of sarcophagi, see Garrucci, vol. v., plate 339 ; 
example in Verona, ibid., plate 333, i ; von Sybel, ii. p. 155 ; Kraus, 
Geschichte der Christlichen Ku?tst, i. p. 11 2. 

^1 On the other hand, to represent all Christian art, and much 
Christian literature and ritual as a mere development and trans- 
formation of the antique, is an old view which many are now com- 
bating (cf p. 10 of my Preface to Delia Seta's Religion and Art). 
Rather must we admit with von Sybel {Christliche Antike, i. pp. 10, 
181, and often), that within the sphere of the later antique were two 
independent developments, the heathen and the Christian ; but there 
were points of contact as in the present instance. 

^2 See the criticism of S. Reinach in Revue Archeologique, 1907? ii- 
p. 184 n. This leaf of a diptych or book cover is variously assigned 
to Theodosius and to Constantine, and the balance of opinion seems, 
on the whole, in favour of the first attribution. See O. M. Dalton, 
op. cit., p. 199 and note i. I incline to retain Strzygowski's view that 
the ivory represents Constantine (cf. Roman Sculpture, p. 345 and 
plate cv.), though he does not, it seems, necessarily think the date 
Constantinian {B.Z., 1913, p. 281). 

^'^ Ch. Diehl, Manuel cPart Byzantin, fig. 307; Dalton, Byzantine 
Art and Archaeology, p. 224 and fig. 138 ; Voge, Berlin Catalogue, 
i. No. 7. 

^* Ibid., fig. 308 ; Dalton, p. 227 and fig. 139 ; Molinier, Ivoires, 
p. 197. 

^^ Kubitschek, Ausgewdhlte Romische Medallions in Wien, 1909, 
plate xxi., from which plate xiii. i is reproduced. 



NOTES 



249 



^ Reproduced here from a photograph kindly sent to me by 
M. Naville. The disc was found in the Arve, near Geneva, in 1721. 
No. 4 of the list given by Strzygowski in the article cited note 103. 
For the style see F. de Mely in Monuments Pi'ot, 1900, vii. p. 74. 

'*'■ The long series of ivory diptychs afifords splendid examples of the 
new principles of frontal composition, and should be carefully studied. 
The fine plates of Molinier's great work make the task easy, and 
von Sybel in his Christliche Antike, ii. pp. 232 ff., has given a valuable 
classification based on the dated examples. I may rapidly mention 
here a few of the more remarkable pieces in the hope of attracting 
students to these exquisite little monuments of later Imperial art 
which are so consistently neglected by classical archaeologists and 
left to enrich the repertory of early Christian art. I have already 
mentioned the diptych of the consul Probus with the figure of the 
Emperor Honorius. The one leaf of the diptych of Felix of the year 
428 in the Cabinet des Medailles shows the consul standing frontally 
between the looped-up curtains of a baldachino with the sceptre 
in his left hand and his right upon his breast (von Sybel, ii. p. 432 and 
fig. 67). The diptych of the young consul Orestes of the year 530 in 
the Victoria and Albert Museum is a good example of the later style 
of ornate diptych (O. M . Dalton, op. cit.., fig. 1 20). The consul is seated 
on an elaborate chair between the figures of Roma and Constantinople; 
in his right hand is the ffiappa, the napkin to be thrown as a signal for 
the commencement of the games : in the open space below are 
servants with sacks of money for distributing the consular largesse. 
In the spaces above the inscriptions are medallion portraits of the 
reigning Emperor and Empress. A lovely ivory at Monza (R.R., 
iii. 62) shows on its left-hand leaf the portrait group of a Roman 
lady and her young son, and on the opposite leaf the portrait of her 
husband in the military accoutrement which betokens a soldier of 
rank (Dalton, op. at, p. 194 ; Molinier, Ivoires, plate ii.). The per- 
sonages have been called Stilicho, Serena and their son Eucherius, 
and Galla Placidia, Valentinian and Theodosius ll., but none of these 
identifications are in the least certain. (Cf. Delbrueck, ' Portrats 
Byzantinischer Kaiserinnen,' in Rom. Mitth., 1913 (xxviii.), p. 335.) 
The massive composition of a diptych at Halberstadt suggests monu- 
mental sculpture rather than the delicate technique of ivory : in the 
centre stands a consul with a high official on either side of him ; on 
an upper frieze the Emperor and his son are seen enthroned between 
Roma and Constantinople, each with the solar nimbus ; this group of 
four, who are shown seated with their feet on a bench, is flanked by 
an Imperial guardsman at either side(i?.7?., ii. 65 ; von Sybel, ii. fig. 68 ; 



250 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

Dalton, fig. Ii8, consular group only). Good examples of diptychs 
are given by Venturi, Storia dell' arte Italiana, vol. i. ; a number are 
reproduced under various Museums in Reinach's Repertoire ; see also 
art. 'Diptychon' in Saglio's Z?zW., and Hans Graeven's monograph 
'Heidnische Diptychen' in Rom. Mitth., 1913 (xxviii.). 

^* I see absolutely no reason for following Mr. Wace m dating these 
reliefs in the epoch of Constantine (J.H.S., igog, p. 64). On the 
contrary, the adoption of the symmetric full-face position for all 
the personages of the Imperial group points decisively, I think, to a 
later date, and generally the style is later than that of the Diocleti- 
anic reliefs on either the arch of Constantine or the arch of Galerius 
at Saloniki. See O. Wulff, op. at., p. 166 ; from WulfFs plate the 
composition seems to me more impressive than I had supposed. 

^^ Dalton, p. 569 and fig. 356 ; see p. 10, No. 5, of the article by 
Strzygowski and Pokrowski cited in note 103. 

^o" These discs are illustrated by O. Dalton, Byzantine Art and 
Archaeology, figs. 57-62, 358. 

^°i Archaeologia, 1879 (45)) plate xix. A fine example of the frontal 
chariot occurs on a fragment of silk preserved at Cluny (Diehl, 
p. 259, fig. 133). 

^<^^ Dalton, fig. 34, v/ho dates the relief at about the eleventh century. 
I should like to note here, in view of making it better known, the 
Ascension of Alexander in a cage drawn by griffins which appears in 
one of a series of fourteenth-century Burgundian tapestries with the 
story of Alexander and Bucephalus, in the possession of Prince 
Doria (Alinari photos, 29737-29742). 

103 Plate i. I, after the fine coloured plate given by Strzygowski and 
Pokrowski, ' der Silberschild aus Kertsch,' in Materiaux pour servir a 
r Archeologie Russe, 1892 (with a list of the nine extant silver discs of 
this class). See also O. M. Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology, 
p. 569 ; Ch. Diehl, Manuel, p. 290, fig. 150. A good example of the 
Adventus Augusti, the Emperor returning or arriving as triumphator, 
familiar from many coins and reliefs, is in the Terme Museum 
(Paribeni, Guida, No. 103). A similar composition (but with the 
figure of the officer omitted) to that of the Kertsch disc occurs on a 
gold medallion of Justinian stolen from the Bibliotheque Nationale in 
1 83 1, but of which a cast exists in the British Museum. See Diehl, 
op. cit., p. 292 ; Cat. of Byzantine Coins in B.M., vol. i., frontispiece ; 
Strzygowski and Pokrowski, p. 34 ; the medallion is illustrated here 
from a cast kindly supplied by Mr. G. F. Hill (plate i. 2). 



NOTES 251 

^"^ He wears the pearl diadem with jewelled clasp, as we see it in 
the statue of Barletta now claimed as a portrait of Valentinian, and 
the pendant pearl-drops. His tunic is embroidered with the davi. 



Ill 
LECTURE II 

Bibliography. — The literature which deals with the different aspects 
of ancient beliefs in the After Life is immense, and it is doubtless only 
very partial justice that I have been able to do to it in the bibliography 
upon which these lectures are constructed. Works that throw light 
on special points will be mentioned in connection with these, but a 
few general considerations may be of assistance to students. 

(i) General. — The books dealing with the magical origins of art 
and of the gravestone and with sepulchral imagery are legion. The 
early chapters of S. Reinach's Orpfieus will be found invaluable. 
See also Hubert and Mauss's article ' Magia ' in Saglio's Dictionary. 
Delia Seta in his Religion and Art deals comprehensively with the 
subject, not only as regards the sepulchral art of Greece and Rome, 
but that of all the ancient races. It will be seen in the sequel that I 
take a less exalted view than his of the art of Attica, of its mythological 
tendencies and spiritual values. This is said that students who read 
his book, as I earnestly recommend them to do, may not be confused 
afterwards by my remarks. 

(2) Greek. — For the sepulchral monuments of the Greek period 
nothing has yet been written to surpass in value and interest Furt- 
wangler's masterly introduction to his description of the SabourofF 
Collection (Adolf Furtwangler, La Collection Sabourqff, Berlin, 1886). 
Here students will find an exhaustive discussion of the meaning and 
origin of the gravestone as eSos of the soul ; of the cult of the dead 
and the cult of the hero to which it gives rise ; of the bearing of both 
upon the development of the later ritual of the gods. In this preface, 
written nearly thirty- six years ago, Furtwangler put forward ideas on 
which researchers in that line have worked ever since. At the same 
time his theory, based on Fustel de Coulanges' La Cite' Antique, ch. i., 
that ' among the Greeks as elsewhere the cult of the souls contains a 
very primitive fund of beliefs anterior to any adoration of the gods,' 
possibly requires modifying, or should at least be held in suspense. 
The question is debatable ; for a lucid and recent resume of opinions 
see R. Dussaud, Introductio?t a PHistoire des Religions., 1914, PP- 



252 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

197-214. Conze's Attische Grabreliefs (3 vols., Berlin, 1893-1906) 
forms the indispensable basis for all study of Attic sepulchral art. 
A selection of Greek sepulchral monuments is conveniently grouped 
together in Professor Percy Gardner's Sculptured Tombs of Hellas^ 
which has the one drawback, however, that it was written as far back 
as 1896, and that much has been discovered since. M. Collignon's 
Statues Funeraires de la Grece^ though the title leads us to suppose it 
restricted to statuary, fortunately contains much also about sepulchral 
reliefs. For Greek ideas as to death Rohde's great book Psyche^ 
now in its fourth edition (1909), and Gruppe's Griechische Mythologie 
u. Religionsgeschichte, must be continually consulted, and read 
through by those who have the time ; also Gruppe's various articles 
in Roscher's Lexikon, as well as in Bursian's Jahresbericht. 

(3) Roman. — For Roman monuments there exists as yet no com- 
prehensive history or handbook. Aitmann's Die romischen Grab- 
altdre der Kaiserzeit deals with the important class of grave altars ; 
C. Robert's huge Corpus of antique sarcophagi {^Die antiken Sarko- 
phagreliefs, 3 vols. ; still in continuation) must be continually referred 
to for Roman art ; but I am mainly concerned with stelae, and only 
refer incidentally to altars or sarcophagi. A. de Marchi, Culto 
Privato de" Romani, two volumes full of curious information for the 
cult of the dead ; V. Macchioro's ' II Simbolismo nelle figurazioni 
sepolcrali Romane ' in Societa Reale di Napoli, Memo7'ie delta Reale 
Accademia di Arckeologia, vol. i. (191 1); the pages dealing with 
the cult of the dead in Warde- Fowler's Religious Experience of the 
Roman People, and F. Cumont's Les Ide'es du Paganisnie Romain 
sur la Vie Picture, 19 10, are of the first importance. So are the 
following : (i) For Roman tombstones with scenes from trades : 
H. Gummerus, ' Darstellungen aus dem Handwerk auf romischen 
Grab und Votivsteinen,' in Arch. Jahrbuch (1913), pp. 63-126. (2) 
For the tombstones in the provinces {a) Br. Schroder, ' Studien zu 
den Grabmalern der Romischen Kaiserzeit'; [p) R. Weynand, 'Form 
und Dekoration der romischen Grabsteine des Rheinlandes' — these 
two in Bonfier fahrbUcher for 1902; [c] A. Furtwangler, 'Das 
Tropaion von Adamklissi und Provinzialromische Kunst,' in 
Abhandlungen der K. Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 
1903, with full references to previous literature on the subject. The 
articles ' Funus ' by Ed. Cuq and ' Sepulcrum ' by E. Cahen in 
Saglio's Dictionary are admirable compilations of the Greek and 
Roman material. Cumont's Religions Orientates dans le Paganisme 
Romain, his smaller book on Mithras (both translated into Eliglish, 
the first with a suggestive introduction by Professor Grant Shower- 
man)j and his Astrology and Religion atnong the Greeks and Romans, 



NOTES 253 

should likewise be consulted for the After Life beliefs of the ancient 
world. 

^ A distinction should be drawn between ghost and revenant ; or 
rather, if the revenant ='■ ^osl^ then 'spirit' should be reserved for 
the excarnate soul. The fear of the ghost is a subject that has 
been treated many times, see especially J. G. Frazer, The Belief 
in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, 191 3 (full of curious 
information from all parts of the world) ; J. C. Lawson, Modem Greek 
Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (19 10), deals fully with fear of the 
ghost in ancient and in modern Greece. For the ' mischievous freedom 
of the ghosts,' see Warde-Fowler, Religious Experiettce, p. 85. The 
literature on the subject is almost interminable. Gruppe, op. cit., ii. 
pp. 75 ff., is a valuable introduction. For the salutary effects of the 
fear of the ghost in historic Greece, see Farnell, Higher Aspects of 
Greek Religion (1912), pp. 88 ff. ; cf ibid., p. 54. 

^ The gesture is often seen on sarcophagi — for instance, on a 
sarcophagus at Ostia (Castello) with the Death of Meleager (Vaglieri, 
Guida, p. 149, No. 4). The soul can leave the body through the 
mouth (Crusius, Untersuchungen zu Herondas, pp. 53 fif.), as on the 
fragment of an early Attic vase to which I shall return later (p. 145), 
where it is received by a Ker or winged daemon. 

^ See A. J. Evans, 'Tree and Pillar Worship,' y.^.^S"., 1901, p. 119. 
On the tombstone as eSos or seat of the soul, see also Weicker, Seelen- 
vogel, p. 9 ; Furtwangler, Coll. Sabouroff, Preface. For theories 
kroncerning the origin of the sepulchral stele, see also Deonna, 
U archeologie, sa valeiir, ses methodes, i. p. 208. 

* See J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and the Wild, Preface, p. vi : 
'This refusal of the savage to recognise in death a final cessation of the 
vital progress, this unquestioning faith in the unbroken continuity of 
all life, is a fact that has not yet received the attention which it seems 
to merit from enquirers into the constitution of the human mind as 
well as into the history of religion ' ; and Furtwangler, Coll. Saboiiroff, 
loc. cit. ' La question de savoir s'il y a ou non une existence apres la 
mort n'a ete soulevee que par la philosophie des peuples civilises. 
L'ancienne croyance, commune a tous les peuples, meme aux plus 
grossiers, ne connait que I'etre au delk du tombeau ; elle salt que la 
mort n'est pas aneanti, qu'il continue a vivre sous telle ou telle forme 
k I'etat d'ame et qu'il conserve comme genie une puissance qui n'est en- 
fermee dans aucune limite visible, ce qui lui permet d'exercer son 
influence sur les vivants.' 



254 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

^ So great was the fear of a return of the dead that sometimes, in 
the case of inhumation, to make matters doubly sure, the corpse was 
huddled together and tied up : examples of this practice occur in 
almost every Italian prehistoric museum, from the early cemeteries of 
Italy, in what is called the cadavero ranicchiato ; few anthropologists 
believe now in the once captivating theory that the huddled-up pose 
was intended to imitate the human foetus, and that the body was thus 
placed in expectation of re-birth. Belief in the necessity of destroying 
beyond recall what we dread and consequently hate, underlies not 
only a whole series of beliefs and superstitions connected with the 
dead, but also a number of practices, such as the burning of witches 
and the auto-da-fc, which, springing from what were conceived by 
primitive man as necessities, afterwards, when their original intention 
had been forgotten, survive as apparently senseless and cruel prac- 
tices. In addition to the fear of the revenant^ we have, in studying 
the origin of burial customs, to reckon with the belief which makes its 
appearance very early, that unless the body be entirely destroyed the 
dead cannot find their rest. Hence perhaps originates the custom of 
cremation and other attempts, such as despoiling the dead body of its 
flesh and leaving the bones painted red, which has been observed in 
certain Neolithic burial caves of North Italy ; the obvious breaking of 
the bones in other cases, e.g. the cadavero raniccJiiato already alluded 
to, to do away finally with the flesh. Cf J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek 
Folklore (especially pp. 412 ff".), and Warde-Fowler, Religious Experi- 
ence of the Ro?nan People, p. 91. 

^ Found in 1903 by the Italian excavators about two miles from 
Phaistos, in a tomb of a type otherwise unknown in Crete, but familiar 
in Lycia, i.e. a walled square chamber with a door (cf. the Harpy 
Tomb), R. Paribeni, Monumenti Antichi dei Lincei, 1908 (xix.), pp. 1-86 
(plate XV. I, 2 {b) after his plates). See also F. von Duhn, 'der Sarko- 
phag aus Hagia Triada,' in A7'chivfiirReligions'wissenschaft., xii. (1909), 
pp. 161-85 5 Karo, ibid., vii. (1904), p. 130, n. i. ; Lagrange, La Crete 
Ancienne (Paris, 1908), pp. 61-67, whose theories are discussed and 
disputed by A. J. Reinach, R.A., xii. (1908), ii. pp. 278-88 ; E. Petersen, 
'Der Kretische Bildersarg,' m Jahrb., 1909, p. 162; R. Dussaud, 
Les Civilisations Pre-Helleniques dajis le bassin de la Mer Ege'e, 2nd 
ed., 1914, pp. 402 ff.; J. E. Harrison, Themis, 1912, pp. 158 ff. ; 
A. J. Reinach, art. 'Themis,' in Rev. Hist. Rel., 1914, Ixix. 3, p. 342. 
The sarcophagus which is in the Museum of Candia is dated at about 
1400-1200 B.C. (see C. H. H. Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, pp. 
86 ff.). It is a small chest or \dpva^ of a type commonly found in 
Crete, see A. J. Evans, Prehistoric To?nbs of Knossos, 1906, pp. 9 ff. : 



NOTES 255 

' They are narrow and short, but apparently the body was laid in them 
with the knees drawn up' (cf. the cadwvero ranicchiato above, note 5). 
For the symbohsm of the cult scene on the sarcophagus, as also for 
the symbolic shape given to certain Minoan tombs, see A. J. Evans 
in Archaeologia, 191 4, pp. 54 ff. 

" This interpretation of the scene follows in the main Petersen, 
op. at. 

® Professor Boni's own report is, I believe, not yet published. For 
ih.& mzmduspatet, see Warde-Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 211 ff. ; the 
same mJ.R.S., 1912, i. p. 25, and J. E. Harrison in Essays and Studies 
■presented to William Ridgeiuay, 1913, pp. 143 ff. 

^ Furtwangler, Pref Coll. Sabouroff: ' On a attribue aussi a I'ame 
la connaissance de I'avenir et recherche les moyens de I'interroger 
sur cet avenir.' 

I'' First and last stanzas of a poem by Edmond Holmes, in The 
Quest, vol. ii. (No 4, July 191 1) pp. 762 f. 

1^ Berlin Cat. Sc, 883 ; Deonna, Les Apollons Archaiques, p. 17 ; 
L. Curtius, Antike Hernie, p. 18, figs. 12-14; cf. Pfuhl in Jahrb., 
1905 (xx.), p. 79. 

^" For Tamuli and the Sicilian tombs of the giants cf Pinza in 
Monumenti Artichi, Lincei, xi. i (1901), and see Addenda. 

^^ Lechat, Sculpture Attique avant Phidias, p. 251 ; cf. Deonna, 
op. cit., p. 17. 

^* Collignon, Statues Funeraires, pp. 16 ff. 

^" Deonna, op. cit., p. 34 and references. 

^^ On the /co{;poy = the 'initiate youth,' see Gilbert Murray, Four 
Stages of Greek Religion, pp. 42 ff. G. Lippold, Griechische Fortrdt- 
statuett, igi2, takes a different view ; while admitting (pp. 13-15) the 
overwhelming number of sepulchral statues of Kovpoi, he seems to 
consider that all these were actually for the graves of young men, 
and that old men were commemorated by draped statues, in support 
of which he also quotes Tyrtaeus. The difficulty lies, as Lippold 
himself admits, in the almost total absence of draped male statues 
in the early archaic period. 

^'' On the short side with the winged chariot, cf. below, note 63. 
For the soul-bird, see the exhaustive monograph by E. Weicker, 
Seelenvogel, 1902. 



256 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

IS The influence of modes of burial upon eschatological beliefs 
has been well put by von Sybel, ChristUche Atztike, vol. ii. pp. 38 fF., 
' Jenseitsgedanken des Altertums.' It would seem as if the belief in 
the resurrection of the flesh and the belief in the immortality ot 
the soul, which, though not mutually exclusive, represent radically 
different conceptions of ultramundane survival, spring respectively 
from the rite of inhumation which keeps in view a possible or even 
an ascertained activity of the dead under ground, and from cremation 
which by effectively destroying the body leaves the soul free to ascend 
or reascend into the upper air. Mr. Lawson {op. cit., p. 489) remarks 
of funeral methods in ancient and modern Greece 'that a preference 
for cremation, considered as a means to the single religious end {i.e. 
the destruction of the body), has been manifested ' ; and although in 
his opinion inhumation equally aimed at destruction, there is no doubt 
that it left a loophole for the introduction of the doctrine of a resur- 
rected body. Probably cremation is in measure responsible for the 
Orphic assertion that the body is the prison of the soul {aa^ia a-rjfia). 

1^ For the red colour as representing the aether, see Deubner, 
J?om. Mitth., 191 2 (xxvii.), pp. 11 ff. 

^^ The various modes of conveyance to heaven are enumerated by 
A. Dietrich, Eine Mithras Liturgie., pp. 179 ff". 

2^ Cf. V. Macchioro, Siinbolistno, p. 124. 

^2 This idea was held by E. P. Biardot among others, Terres 
Cuites grecques fimebres dans leiir rapport avec les Tnysteres de 
Bacchus., Paris, 1872, who, however, after the fashion of the time, 
went on a false track of mythological interpretation in his desire to 
see in every object some allusion to Dionysiac mysteries. 

^^ For the Mycenaean stelae from the shaftgraves, see literature 
cited by E. v. Mercklin : Rennwagen bei de7i Grieche7t, pp. 7 ff. ; 
S. Reinach, R.R., ii. p. 316,6; p. 317, 2; Perrot, vi. pp. 762 ff". ; 
Drerup, Omero, pp. 31, 205 ; P. Gardner, Sculptured Tombs of 
Hellas, figs. 18, 19, 20. 

2* Tree and Pillar Cult, loc. cit. 

2^ The best that has yet been said on these Spartan reliefs is by 
Furtwangler, Coll. Sabourqff{t&xt to plate i., example in Berlin). See 
also M. N. Tod and A. J. B. Wace, Catalogue 0/ the Sparta Museum, 
pp. 102 ff"., with references to recent literature ; P. Gardner, Sculptured 
Tombs, plate ii., pp. 76 ff". ; Collignon, Statues Funeraires, pp. 71 ff". 
Students are likewise recommended to read the earlier articles on 



NOTES 257 

these stelae by Milchofer in Arch. Zeit.^ 1881, p. 294, and in the earlier 
volumes of the AtheniscJie Mittheilungejt ; also Furtwangler, Ath. 
Mitth., 1882, vii. pp. 160 ff. For the 'banquet of the dead,' see 
Deneken, art. ' Heros,' in Roscher's Lexikon ; and W. H. D. Rouse, 
Greek Votive Offerings^ pp. 3-36. 

2® The snake is the dead man's ' spirit in another form,' as 
P. Gardner puts it, op. cit, p. 82 ; it is what Professor Gilbert Murray 
calls the 'old superhuman snake, who reappears so ubiquitously 
throughout Greece, the regular symbol of the underworld powers, 
especially the hero or dead ancestor' {Four Stages, p. 33). 

^'' Furtwangler, Coll. Sabouroff, text to plate i., where see references to 
earlier literature, has pointed out that the cock, like the dog, was held 
in Persian beliefs to ward off evil spirits. The cock, moreover, is 
said to have been introduced from Persia ; but this, as the Spartan 
stelae, which cannot from their style be later than the seventh century, 
show, must have been earlier than is generally supposed (Furtwangler). 
For the apotropaic function of the cock, see Conze, Attische Grabreliefs, 
i. p. 10. The beautiful frieze of cocks and hens from a monument at 
Xanthos {Brit. Mus. Sculpt. Cat.., 82) is certainly apotropaic, it being 
consistent with archaic custom to surround a monument, whether temple 
or tomb, with a band of protective influences. For the symbolism of 
animals see art. ' Animals' by N. W. Thomas in E.R.E. ; O. Keller's 
Thiere des Altertums, 1887-1912 (2 vols.) ; and Gruppe, op. cit., pp. 
792 ff. Below, note 57, and Lecture III. note 50. 

2^ The offering of eggs to the dead has a magical intention, since, 
as Dr. Nilsson has pointed out (' Das Ei im Totenkult der Alten,' in 
Arch, fiir Religions wissenschaft, 1908 (xi.), pp. 544 ff.), the ^'g'g is an 
apparently inanimate and inert substance which contains within itself 
a potent principle of life, and that which has a special vital power 
must perforce awake or enhance the vital powers of those to whom 
it is offered. See also A. Dietrich, Mutter Erde, p. 103. 

^^ The pomegranate is likewise held by the enthroned female 
figure ; for its meaning on the Spartan reliefs, see Furtwangler, Coll. 
Sabourqffi, i., text to plate i. ; Milchofer in Ath. Mitth., ii. pp. 464, 
469, etc. The pomegranate would be thought to contain in its 
myriad seeds the principle of life, and, like the Qgg, became an easily 
understood instrument of re-birth. It possibly appears in this sense 
on the garments of the priests in Exodus, xxviii. : ' And upon the skirts 
of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of 
scarlet.' Cf E. Benzinger in the Jewish Cyclopaedia, art. ' Pomegran- 
ates,' who remarks that throughout the East the pomegranate is the 

R 



258 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

general symbol of luxuriant fertility and life ; see, however, the 
various explanations of these pomegranates given by Flinders Petrie 
in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (art. 'Bell '), i. p. 269, and ibid., 
art. 'Art' ('lotus and bud in the shape of pomegranates, misnamed in 
Palestine "bell and pomegranate"') ; Eisler, Weltenmantel, p. 25. 

'" The interesting relief in Lansdowne House {R.R., ii. 519, 3), so 
quaintly interpreted as ' Homer meditating on the Iliad,' comes 
within the same category. It represents the dead man seated 
leaning on a staff; under his seat, in the place often occupied by a 
dog, appears the griffin as vehicle of the soul ; opposite him is a tree 
stem around which twines the snake-soul ; on the top a bird and 
branching foliage- — all emblems of survival and resurrection. The 
real provenance is unknown. The same influences pervade the stele, 
said to come from Saloniki, in Constantinople, where the dead couple 
seated are faced by the snake which feeds from a cup held by the 
woman, while the man holds in his hand a burgeoning staff 
(Mendel, Catalogue, No. 91). 

^^ J. A. K. Thomson, Studies in the Odyssey, Oxford, 19 14, p. 93 : 
'For the Homeric religion the world of the dead hardly exists any 
more than it did for the religion of Israel.' The comparison does not 
seem altogether exact (see below, note 85). 

^' The Homeric conception of death, and its subsequent influence 
on the Greek mind and on Greek art, have been admirably summed 
up by von Sybel in the Introduction to his Christliche Antike, from 
which my own summary in the text is largely paraphrased. Cf also 
Delia Seta, Religion and Art, pp. 179 ff. ('the funerary conception in 
Homer'), and Carlo Pascal, Le Credenze d'Oltre Tomba, i. ch. xii. 
('L'oltre tomba Omerico'). 

^^ Stele of Xanthippos, from the monastery of Asomatos, near 
Athens ; generally interpreted as the stele of a shoemaker, unless 
indeed it is a votive offering to Asclepios for the cure of a bad foot 
{Brit. Mus. Sculpt. Cat., 628). The bird held by the girl is the symbol 
of the soul. 

^* Style of the Pheidian period. 

^^ Actors, e.g. the Attic stele at Lyme Park {R.R., ii. p. 520, 3 ; 
first published by me mJ.H.S., 1903, plate xiii.). 

36 Cf. Delia Seta, Religion and Art, p. 229. This is true, on the 
whole ; yet occasionally on an archaic stele {e.g. Villa Albani, of a 
mother and her children = i?.i?., iii. 153; Helbig, No. 805) the 
interest is as equally distributed between the dead and the living as 



NOTES 259 

on the stele of Hegeso. For an example in which the dead is almost 
forgotten in the crowd of sorrowing relatives, see R.R., ii. pp. 402, 
403, etc. Furtwanglefs view, Coll. Sabotcrqff] Pref., that all the 
persons represented on these stelae are either already dead or 
thought of as dead, is, I think, untenable. 

^'' See Delia Seta, op. cit., pp. 227-31. 

^^ Pp. 84, 1 84, and passim. Gardner's 'views largely represent 
those of the scholars cited in note 25, who first interpreted the Spartan 
reliefs. 

^" Plate xvii. i, after Conze, AttiscJie Grabreliefs^ pi. i. (see text for 
references to the older literature). A new drawing by Gillieron 
shows that only one horseman is depicted on the socle, not two as 
formerly surmised (Loeschcke, Arch. Ans., I9i3) P- 64, who explains 
the picture as that of the 'heroised dead'). The dead man is 
frequently represented as rider, e.g: on the socle of the stele No. yi, in 
Coll. Barracco ; the action of galloping suggests the further notion 
of racing or riding as a noble pastime ; for the discarded notion of a 
scene of mortal racing see AtJi. Mitth., iv. pp. 44, 291. 

*" The socle in the archaic period seems to have been not un- 
frequently reserved for symbolic scenes or objects ; see, among others, 
the archaic Ionian stele from the island of Symi in the Museum of 
Constantinople, G. Mendel, Cat.., 14, where the boar on the socle is 
assuredly introduced as a prophylaxis ; cf. Loeschcke in Jakrb., 
1887 (ii.), p. 223 ; and the Barracco stele mentioned in note 39. 

** For the meaning of both dog and horse in Greek sepulchral 
imagery see Furtwangler, Atk. Mittli.., vii. 163, and his introduction 
to Coll. Sabouroff.,^. 26 ; and cf the articles of Milchofer and Loeschcke, 
quoted in note 25. P. Gardner {/.U.S., v. 131) suggested that a 
mortal horse and dog were intended in these reliefs, but this view 
is untenable. For the underworld dog see Erwin Rodhe, Psyche, 
ed. 4, ii. p. 83 (dog of Hekate) ; i. p. 242, etc. ; Gruppe, op. cit., 
pp. 803 fif. For the dog on the Chrysapha reliefs, Tod and Wace, 
op. cit., No. 10 ; see below, note 56. On the stele of Eutamia the 
guardian dog may likewise be intended to convey an allusion to the 
lady's name. L. Malten's exhaustive article 'das 'Pferd im Toten- 
glauben' in Arch. Jahrbiich., xxix. (pub. Jan. 30, 191 5) only reaches me 
as I revise these notes for press. Malten treats most fully of the 
horse as ISos of the soul and in the ritual of the dead, of the dead as 
horseman, and also discusses the dog, the bird in its many forms, etc., 
in relation to the same cycle of beliefs. Malten postulates more 
definitely than has been done so far, that dog, horse, snake, so often 



26o APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

accumulated on grave reliefs as underworld symbols, are originally 
habitats or forms in which the soul appears {Erscheinungsfornien). 

^"^ Numerous examples in Gardner, op. cit., who, however, does not 
go beyond seeing in these birds votive offerings or gifts. For the 
birds = souls which the dead hold in their hand on archaic grave 
reliefs, especially in Cyprus, see Weicker, p. 26, note 5, who admits the 
duality of representation ' as human being and as soul.' 

*^ The lion, to whom we shall often have occasion to return, occurs 
at a very early date in Phrygia as guardian of the tomb, P. Gardner, 
Scidptii7-ed Tombs, fig. 25, pp. 64 ff., and Sir William Ramsay in 
J. U.S., 1888, 1889, and 1890. A good instance in Greece, at Corfu, 
from the tomb of Arniadas (Gardner, p. 200) ; the classic examples are 
the lion of Cnidus in the British Museum, which was set up on the tall 
pyramidal structure on the promontory to commemorate the victory 
of Conon in B.C. 394 (Gardner, pp. 225 ff., fig. jy), and the cele- 
brated lion of Chaeronea still in situ. For other examples see 
Gardner, pp. 130 ff. ; Collignon, Statues Fum'raires, figs. 147-53. 
The three first all in Athens ; of these, fig. 148 is especially interesting 
as showing the Graeco- Oriental motive of a lion holding between his 
paws the head of an animal which he has overcome (see p. 151). At 
a later date aetiological stories (Lais, Leaina, etc.) were invented to 
account for the lions on certain tombs, when their apotropaic and 
other more primitive functions had been forgotten. For the lion and 
its meanings and mythology, see, further, Gruppe, Handbuck, p. 380. 
The basis for all study of the symbolism of the lion on graves remains 
Usener's de carmine quodaiii PJiocaico (in his Kleine Scht'iften, iii. 18}. 
See below, note 69. 

"** The splendid stele of Dionysus of Kollytes, surmounted by a bull, 
in the Athenian Ceramicus, is present to every one's mind, Collignon, 
fig. 154, also fig. 155 and fig. 156 (bull in British Museum). 

""^ See A. Bruckner and E. Pernice, ' Ein Attischer Friedhof ' in 
Ath. Mitth., xviii. pp. 73-191, and the more recent work of Frederick 
Poulsen, Die Dipylongrdber tind die Dipylott Vasen, Leipzig", 1905 ; 
for the vase placed Oft the actual grave, ibid., p. 19. 

*® Saglio, sub. vac. fumes, fig. 3342. 

*'' Plate xviii. after Fairbanks, White-figured Lekythoi in the Museum 
of Boston, plate vi. As a class they can best be studied in E. Pottier's 
' Lecythes blancs attiques ' (in Me'langes des Ecoles Fj-angaises 
dAthcnes et de Rome), whose classification is important to the 



NOTES 261 

student of sepulchral ritual. Without seeking for examples outside 
P. Gardner's ch. ii. ('Worship of the Dead'), I should like to show 
briefly how closely the scenes on the lekythoi reflect the same beliefs 
as to the other life that we note in connection with the most primitive 
grave monuments. For instance, there can be no doubt, to my mind, 
that in fig. 8 (lekythos from Eretria) the bunch of grapes which a lady 
hands to a boy at her feet is symbolic of immortality. What Pro- 
fessor Gardner calls a ' curious convention,' i.e. the introduction of the 
actual dead into the scenes, is simply a proof of the belief that the 
dead is immanent in his o\^^l stele (fig. 9). When the dead are repre- 
sented as playing the l}Te, it is probably in allusion to their ultra- 
mundane pastimes {R.R.., ii. 373, 4, at Athens, but it is noteworthy 
that the stele comes from Acarnania, i.e. is non-Attic). Most 
significant of all is fig. 11, from a red-figured vase in the British 
Museum {Cat. Vases, iv. plate 4), where the pathetic central figure 
standing on the grave is well explained by Gardner as the dead ' her- 
self in spiritual presence.' As a rule, the scenes of the cult of the 
tomb are confined to lekythoi. Besides the one mentioned in the text, 
specially beautiful examples are Fairbanks, pp. 203 and 283, in Athens 
and Paris respectively. On the whole question of votive offerings at 
graves see Furtwangler in Coll. Sabouroff, ii. pp. 16 ff. 

** See R. W. Livingstone, The Greek Genius audits Meaning to us, 
p. 86. 

*^ I use the words 'gave a new turn . . .' advisedly — as it is 
impossible to look upon Plato as anything but a mystic by tempera- 
ment, though his acceptance of the mystical faith of Pythagorean 
Orphism may have been a later development in him. Neither 
Orpheus nor the Orphic beliefs find any direct expression in Attic 
sepulchral art, though Orpheus with his lute appeared, as a purely 
mythological figure, in the Nekuia of Polygnotus at Delphi (Paus. 
X. 30, 3, and cf. ix. 30, 3). 

The allusions to the Orphism of Plato on p. 141 and the first part of 
this note were written before I had become fully aware of the debated 
question whether Plato was initiated into the Orphic doctrines by 
Socrates — on this supposition himself an Orphic — or after his master's 
death, and independently of the teaching of Socrates. (See F. 
M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, §§ 126-9, who in § 129, 
' Plato's Conversion to Pythagoreanism,' seems to state the problem 
very clearly ; A. E. Taylor, Varia Socratica, ic)ii, passim ; J. Burnet, 
Greek Philosophy f?'om Thales to Plato, 1914, pp. 151 fif.) Pisistratus 
is credited with the introduction into Attica, alike of Homer and of 
Orpheus ; (for Orpheus see Gruppe, Handbiich, p. 1034 ; Roscher, 



262 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

iii. 1 196 and 1132 ; Burnet, op. cit, p. 32); of the two religious currents, 
therefore, which are generally held to be antagonistic and irreconcil- 
able. But their existence side by side, though Homer long kept the 
upper hand, may account in measure for the persistence of resurrec- 
tion and After Life symbolism noted on certain Attic stelae. Presum- 
ably the Orphism so often scoffed at by Plato (e.g. Rep.^ p. 363, C, 
etc.) is a popular form of Orphism full of naive superstition, while the 
Orphism for which, as some now have it, Socrates was put to death 
(see A. E. Taylor, op. cif., pp. 30 fif. ; J. Burnet, pp. 180 ff.) must have 
represented a reformed faith introduced by the Pythagoreans of 
Magna Grecia (cf. Adam, Religious Teachers of G^^eece^ p. 191). All 
hese are questions of vital importance for our sepulchral imagery. 

"^ See Lecture II L p. 197. 

^^ For the sentiment cp. also Pindar's second Olympian ode, 57 fif., 
131 fif., and especially the passage beginning tv6a naKapav vda-os 
oiKeavides. See J. Adam, Religious Teachers (Lecture vi., ' Pindar '). 

^2 Wilamowitz,j5«(r^/zVz Graeci^ p. 94. C£ Christ, Griechische Litera- 
turgeschichte, ii. i, 151, for the authorship. 

^^ Antike Denhniiler, iii. plates v.-vi. 

^* C. M. K.?inixa2Lrm,JeftseitshoJf7tujtgen, pp. 11 ff. 

^^ Colonna Ceccaldi, Monuments Antiques de Chypre, 1882, p. 71. 

'"^ Antike Denkmdler., 1SS9, i. plates xliv.-xlvi. for the specimens in 
Berlin, Vienna, and Smyrna, and the London fragment mentioned below 
in note 57 ; for the example in Constantinople see Man. dell '' Inst. xi. 
plate liv.; S. Reinach, Rev. des Etudes Grccques.ii%<^^., p.i6i, enumerates 
as man)' as eighteen of these sarcophagi scattered among various 
museums. A complete list of examples known up to 1901 in A. Joubin, 
de Clasomeniis Sarcophagis. For the splendid example in the British 
Museum see A. S. Murray, Terracotta Sarcophagi Greek and Etruscan 
in the British Museum., 1898, plates i.-vii.; for examples recently 
acquired by Berlin, Afit. Denkmdler, ii. plates xxv.-xxvii. and plate 
xxviii. My plate xix. is after Murray, op. cit. pi. iii. (detail of interior). 

•''" The young man with the two dogs occurs on a fragment in the 
British Museum ; see Ant. Denkm.., \. 46, 3. For its interpretation see 
Furtwangler in Arch. Anz. (1889), p. 147, who shows that the youth 
between two dogs, signifying that he is their master, is in a sense a 
symbol of Apotheosis. Furtwangler also recalls here that in Persian 
belief dog and cock protect the soul from evil spirits on its way to the 
underworld, c£ Loeschcke, 'Aus der Unterwelt' in Dorpatcr Programm, 



NOTES 263 

1888, and the criticism of his views by O. Immisch in Roscher, 
art. ' Kerberos,' pp. 1 127 fif. I abide by the view expressed in the text 
that the cocks are anoTpoTrala. Cf. Lecture III. p. 214. For this 
function of the cock see especially Gruppe, op. «'/., ii. pp. 794 ff. 

^^ See the epoch-making" article ' Ker,' by Otto Crusius, in Roscher, 
ii. pp. 1 150 ff., and Weicker, Seelenvogel (1902), pp. 2-7, who discusses 
the origin and nature of Keres, Erinyai, Sirens, etc., and shows their 
cognate characters, and how the Ker, for example, from being a 
daemon of the vampire class that sucks from the dead the blood 
which is the principle of life, and so draws out his soul, can also be 
identified with the soul (cf. O. Crusius, loc. cit., who conjectures that 
the soul was thought to take on wings at the moment of separation 
from the body). In this way the Ker, as Weicker points out, sheds 
its character of death daemon to put on that of ' angel of death.' 

^^ Published by P. Yi2LXt\v\%^ Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1891, xii. 
p. 340. 

^^ Bull. Corresp. Hellcnique., iSqS? P- 238, fig. 6 ; Weicker, op. cit, 
fig. 9, pp. 14 ff., who gives the interpretation followed above. 

^^ See above note 43 ; and below, note 69. 

^2 The Chariot of Monteleone, first published by Furtwangler in 
Arndt Bruckmann, Denhndler, pi. 586-587 -(his Kleine Schriften, ii. 
pp. 314 ff., pi. xxx.-xxxii.) Plate xv. 2 {a) from a recent photograph. 

^^ So also in Roman times ; cf. the winged chariot that bears the 
deified Caesar on the Vatican altar, above, p. 67. 

^* E. hoe^y va. Melanges Perrot, 1903 ('Zum Harpyien Monument'), 
pp. 223-225, shows that the pre-eminent position accorded to the 
women of the family on the principal face of the monument points to 
the matriarchal customs of Lycia where the leading position of 
women, spoken of by Herodotus (i. 173) is borne out by the 
inscriptions. Milchofer had likewise regarded the scenes of the 
Harpy Tomb as homage or worship rendered to the heroised dead 
{Ath. Mitth., 1879, iv. p. 168; Arch. Zeit., 1881, xxxix. p. 53). 
Gardner, Sculpt. Tojnbs, p. 72, regards the little kneeling female 
figure below the Harpy on the west side to be that of the donor or 
dedicator of the tomb. Winged figures similar to those of the 
Harpy Tomb occur on the archaic fragments from Ephesus {Brit. 
Mus. Sculpt. Cat.., p. 37, Nos. 36-45), cf. Weicker, op. cit., p. 126, 
and note i. 



264 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

^^ We are here confronted with a fresh proof of the close connection, 
so often pointed out, between the inhabitants of Southern Gaul and 
the lonians. Marseilles had been colonised by the Phocaeans, and 
other towns of the littoral may well have been of Ionian origin. 
The resemblance between the ' Nativity of Aphrodite ' and the 
relief of a martyrdom at S. Trophime is noted by Dom Leclerq in 
the admirable article 'Anges' in the Dictionnaire iFArcheologie 
Chretienne. Dom Leclerq likewise quotes the scene of the weighing 
of the souls by the angels, but could not at the date of his article 
have known of the Boston Throne. 

•"^ The parallelism between the stooping angels and the stooping 
nymphs is as remarkable as that between the nude kneeling souls in 
the trays of the one balance, and the nude standing souls of the 
other. On the other hand, the cloth held in front of the ' Aphrodite ' 
may have the same significance as that in which in Christian art the 
angels receive and clothe the spirits as they pass to another world ; 
cf. the ivory in the British Museum with the martyrdom of S. Menas, 
above whom hovers an angel spreading" out his mantle to wrap about 
the newborn soul of the saint {Cat. Early Christian Antiq.^ No. 297, 
and plate iv.). It is in the same order of ideas that on the relief of 
the Death of Our Lady in S. Maria in Trastevere (above the tomb of 
Cardinal d'Alengon), the soul in the form of a swaddled babe is held 
up by S. John. 

"'' Weicker, Seelenvogel., p. 96, fig. 25. 

^^ The art types of this tomb are discussed by Fr. Poulsen {der 
Orient und die friihgriechische Kunst, 191 2, pp. 150 ff., figs. 179-80), 
who consider that they belong to the Phoenicio-Cypriote cycle. 
See Poulsen, ibid., figs. 182, 183, for a fragment of relief from Isinda 
in Lycia, now in Constantinople, with men, horses, and dogs moving 
to the right. It resembles in style the Lycian processional reliefs in 
the British Museum. 

^^ On the lion in Asia Minor, see Cumont, Oriental Religions., 
p. 224, note 2, and references. A. B. Cook, Zeus, p. 238 : ' Greeks 
and Romans alike, therein agreeing with the Egyptians and the 
nations of the nearer East, looked upon the lion as an animal full of 
inward fire and essentially akin to the sun.' Both bull and lion, from 
their tawny or reddish colour, were early connected with the idea of 
fire (Gruppe, op. cit., ii. pp. 797 ff.) ; the sacrifice of bulls to the Sun 
( = Fire) was of extreme antiquity, and, as Gruppe points out, at the 
back of this ritual we doubtless have the conception of Fire or Sun 
reabsorbing the jsarticles (bulls) once detached from it. As the lion 



NOTES 265 

represents fire, the meaning of the lion devouring the bull is evident. 
Butthebull, as we shall see (Lecture III. p. 194), is something more than 
the divine fiery particles to be reabsorbed ; it also represents, I take 
it, at least on the tombs, the earthly tenement within which the particles 
are imprisoned ; hence the bull must be devoured before the particles 
can be liberated. I propose shortly to deal with the imagery of the 
group of lion and bull at greater length than is possible here. 

™ O. Benndorf, Das Hereon vo7i Gjolbascki-Trysa, Vienna, 1889. 
I may briefly indicate those of the scenes that bear most im- 
mediately on the present subjects : — {a) Over the entrance, outside : 
four heads of winged lions, and between them in the centre the 
mask of the Medusa, all apotropaic ; beneath each pair of lions 
the heroised couple facing, {b) Over the door, inside : the row of 
dwarf-like figures is again apotropaic ; the dancing figures on each 
side are emblematic of After Life joys, like the Bacchic figure on 
Roman tombstones (pp. 199 ff.). {c) On the left of the doorway the 
chariot of the Apotheosis (B. plate xxii.) here combined with the episode 
of Bellerophon and the Chimaera. Behind the group of Apotheosis 
is a long banquet scene with the Blessed reclining, etc. Cf. Koepp, 
Jahrb.^ igoy, p. 70, and H. Thiersch, ibid., p. 265, for the reinter- 
pretation of certain subjects at Gjolbaschi which show the con- 
tinued predominance of women in Lycia (cf. note 64 on Harpy 
Tomb). 

^^ Brit. Mus. Sculpt. Cat.., 950. Tomb of Payava. On each side of 
the arched roof a chariot drawn by four galloping horses. Not the 
horses but the chariot itself is winged. The two huge heads of lions 
looking out frontally on either side are, of course, prophylactic ; the 
hunting scenes of the frieze carry the usual reference to After Life 
pastimes ; the reliefs at either end comprise in the two upper panels 
guardian sphinxes, and in the lower panels portraits of the heroised 
dead. The reliefs on the chamber of the tomb which resembles a 
sarcophagus in house form, represent on one long side a combat scene, 
probably an exploit in the life of the deceased ; on the second long 
side a judgment scene, unexplained. On one short side two armed 
warriors leaning on their spears stand side by side ; on the other, 
a venerable draped man places a crown on the head of a nude 
youth. 

British Museum Scupt. Cat.., 951. On the tomb of Merehi we have 
on each side of the roof the chariot of the Apotheosis, and in place of 
the apotropaic lions of the tomb of Payava, a chimaera on the one 
side, and a panther on the other, used with similar intent to ward off 
evil spirits. On the friezes along the crest of the roof — {a) Combat 



266 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

scenes ; {b) a judgment scene, the figure of an old draped man 
placing a crown on a nude youth ; {c) the banquet of the Blessed. 
The chariot group, which, of course, can be no other than the chariot 
of the Apotheosis, occurs frequently in Lycia. The most important 
parallels are on the reliefs with the Apotheosis from Gjolbaschi 
already noted. 

"^ Benndorf, Heroon, plates i., ii. of text, and plate xxxii. of atlas ; 
tomb with apotropaic lion and banquet of Apotheosis. Cf. the 
reliefs from the facade of a tomb at Tlos in valley of the Xanthos, 
cast in British Museum, No. 260 — R.R., ii. 112, 5 ; in the centre of 
each panel of door apotropaic heads ; on relief to left Bellerophon as 
emblem of victory and Apotheosis (though I am not unmindful of 
Pindar, Pythian, ii. 39). Another sarcophagus from Gjolbaschi is 
in Constantinople (Mendel, Cat., no). The representation is not so 
'enigmatic' as the commentators make out. Along the crest are 
represented the joys of the After Life (?) ; on each side of the lid, 
within a panel, is the chariot of the Apotheosis. In the smaller 
lower panel, a lion passant with head turned apotropaically to the 
front ; the lion has his paw on the head of a bull — already, I believe, 
to indicate the consummation of the earthly body ; at each side two 
huge apotropaic gorgon heads in high relief; apotropaic also are 
the heads of animals that projected from the shorter ends, and the 
mask projecting from the long frame of the roof. Within each of the 
oval panels of the short ends appear the dolphins as vehicle of the 
soul's transit. On the panels of the chest protective garlands hang 
between boiikrattia. This Lycian tomb is as well guarded against 
the attacks of evil spirits as any primitive Latin temple with its 
coronal of protective gorgoneia and other emblems in terra-cotta, 
see my article in/.R.S., 1915, v. p. 164. 

''' I cannot help reminding students in connection with the Mausoleum 
and the Nereid monument, which each show statues placed in the inter- 
spaces of the columns, that the famous Niobids of Florence probably 
represent a similar decoration from one of the large temple tombs 
which became increasingly fashionable in Greek Asia Minor ; cf. 
CoUignon, Statues F'z^neraires, p. 264. 

73a Yor the grave reliefs from Chios, and the stele of Metrodoros, 
see Studinczka in At/i. Mz'tt/i., 1888 (xiii.), pp. 192 ff. On the imagery 
of the Siren, see the first part of Weicker's Seele7tz>ogel. The Siren 
appears first as a Jiabitat of the Soul and then becomes a Mourner. 

"* Mendel, Cat., 63. The contest scenes (Centaurs, death of 
Kaineus, etc.) are, as Mendel points out, borrowed from Attic motives, 



NOTES 267 

but I imagine they are used with symbolic content. The sculptor is 
certainly under the spell of Pheidian influence, and almost hypnotised 
by its suggestion, so that he has transformed into somewhat meaning- 
less scenes the bold sepulchral imagery of the Lycian tombs. 

^^ Furtwiingler in AbhandliDJgen der K. Bajerische?i Akademie der 
Wissenschaften, xxii. (1902), pp. 99-105, Das Heiligtuni der Aphaia, 
fig. 268 ; Collignon, Statues Funeraires, fig. 56. The relief, said 
to have been found in Rome, was, when I first knew it, in the 
possession of Dr. Hommel in Munich. Furtwangler pronounced it 
Attic ; it seems to me decidedly Ionian. For the motive of Hermes 
placing his hand on the shoulder of the woman to introduce her to 
the underworld Furtwangler compares the Ildefonso group in Madrid, 
Avhich is also probably sepulchral. The motive of the mourners 
sitting in the Elysian fields seems borrowed from the Nekida of 
Polygnotus. 

"^ D. G. Hogarth, Ionia and the East^ p. 7. 

"'"^ G. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, 2nd ed., p. 276. 

'^ For an attempted reconstruction, see C. Robert, 16 Winckehn. 
progr., 1892, and cf Schoene in Arch. JaJirb.., 1893, viii. 213. 

"^ Revue de PArt for 1910, i. pp. 404 fif., and Jahrb., 1913, p. 309 
and plate xxvi., from which plate xxi. is taken. 

^^ These reliefs have been exhaustively studied by E. Pfuhl in 
Jahrbuch., 1905, pp. 47 ff. and pp. 123 fF. (see also op. cit., 1907, 
pp. 113 ff.), with analysis of the many symbolic objects represented 
upon them (sirens, chests or Xapvauss, baskets, altars, tables, double 
horn of abundance with fruits ; cf. British Museum yo4 = R.R., ii. 503, 
i) ; three fine examples of these stelae are in the Cook Collection at 
Richmond (R.R., ii. 532, i, 3, 4), and the Ashmolean at Oxford is 
specially rich in examples from Smyrna. Collignon, Statues Fune- 
raires, pp. 270 ff. 

*^ For the testament of Epikteta see Benndorf, Heroon., pp. 45 ff. The 
shrine appears to have been to the Muses and to the heroised family 
of Epikteta, i.e. she founded a hero cult for her husband Phoinix and 
two dead sons Andragoras and Kratesilochos, into which Epikteta 
was herself admitted. The articles of the dedication, consisting of 
the testament of Epikteta, and the statutes of the confraternity which 
she established for the administration of the cult, were engraved on 
eight columns on a great marble podium which was set up on the site 
and carried the statues of the foundress and her dead. 



268 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

^2 The Alexandrian stelae have been described by E. Pfuhl in Ath. 
Mitth., 1901, XX. pp. 258-304. 

*^ W. Altmann, Architektur und Ornainentik dcr Antiken Sarco- 
phage, pp. 31 ff., with references ; cf. M. Collignon, Statues Funcraires, 
pp. 347 ff- 

** See Rudolph Pagenstecher, Unteritalische Grabdenkmaeler, 1912. 

^* On the Hebrew She'ol see C. F. Burney, Israel's Hope of Immor- 
tality^ pp. 7 ff. 2Ln^ passim ; also Dr. R. H. Charles, Religious Develop- 
ment between the Old and New Testament^ 1914 (ch. iv. 'A Blessed 
Future Life '). It is usual to compare the Hebrew She'ol to the Greek 
or rather the Homeric conception of existence after death (Burney, 
p. 14), but the resemblance to the Roman view seems to me much 
closer. She'ol and the Roman Manes alike represent a stage where 
the dead were neither differentiated nor individualised. The Homeric 
conception, on the other hand, seems rather the outcome of a feeling 
of discouragement and helplessness on the part of a people who had 
tried to lift the veil and solve the supreme mystery, and failed in the 
attempt. The Nekuia of the XI. Odyssey represents a falling-away 
from substantial and positive beliefs to a negative state of mind 
which looks upon the dead as strengthless and powerless, the mere 
shadows of their former selves. Yet these strengthless dead are in 
possession of their human faculties and mindful of their life on earth, 
a fact which differentiates them by a whole world of thought and 
experience from the dim underworld of She'ol. It would seem as if 
the action of memory in framing any conception of the dead were not 
sufficiently taken into account. The living perforce tend to think of 
the dead in the terms of this life, and to imagine them very like what 
they were on earth. This process by which the other world becomes 
peopled with highly individualised images issued in the 'unlimited 
individualism ' with which Dr. Charles reproaches the Greek doctrine 
of immortality. Different religions or different phases of the same 
religion may tend to check or to promote this action of the memorj', 
and our stelae afford interesting indication of the fluctuations of belief 
with regard to a future state. In Greece a definite picture of a future 
existence is first attempted ; then, under Attic influence, the vision 
is lost sight of, and in its place we get a mythological or historic view 
of the dead, though outside Attica the belief in a future state was 
never completely suppressed, and reasserted itself in later antiquity. 
In Rome, on the other hand, in the beginning, everything seems 
obscured by a magic mist, but when once under the influence of the 
later Greek mysticism belief as to a future state had definitely 
emerged, it was never again lost sight of. 



NOTES 269 

^^ For the Roman view of death, and the cult of the dead, see, 
especially, J. B. Carter, in E.R.E., under 'Ancestor-worship — Roman ' ; 
G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Rlinier, 2nd ed., 1912, pp. 232 ff. ; 
Warde-Fowler, Religious Experience, pp. 84 ff. and passim ; Cyril 
Bailey, Religion of Ancient Rome, pp. 49 ff. 

^" Saglio's Dicfioftary, art. ' Imago,' by Ed. Courbaud, pp. 409 ff., 
and art. ' Imagines Maiorum,' by H. Meyer in Pauly. In the exclu- 
sively patrician right of the iics imaginum, which points to so different 
a conception of the dead from that of the mass of the people of 
Rome, we may perhaps see the trace of beliefs introduced by a 
conquering race. 

^^ See Hiilsen, Rovimt Fofitm, trans. Carter, 2nd ed., 1909, pp. 
222-229, for an account of the Sepolcreto. 

^^ On early jewelry as amulets see Deubner in E.R.E. (' Charms 
and Amulets '). 

^^ Now well described by Dr. Weege in Helbig's Fiihrer, vol. ii. 
pp. 312-355. In speaking of the Villa Giulia, however, we must not 
forget the excellently arranged collection in the Museo Kircheriano, 
with finds from the necropoleis of Latin sites (Castel Gandolfo, 
Albano, etc.). 

^^ Tomba Barberijii \n Museo di Villa Giulia, Helbig, ii. No. 1766 ; 
and see the excellent article by Delia Seta in Bolletino d'Arfe, 1909, 
iii. pp, 161 ff. Totnba Bernardiiii in Museo Kircheriano, see 
Helbig, ii. pp. 259-271. Tomba Regolini-Galassi in Museo Gregoriano 
of Vatican, Helbig, i. pp. 352, 387, and the new book (1914) by 
B. Nogara and A. Pinza, La Tomba Regolini Galassi e gli altri 
viateriali coevi del Museo Gregoriano- Etrusco. 

^- Delia Seta, fig. 133 and p. 250, puts this more tentatively. 

®^ A number of these friezes are mentioned by Mrs. van Buren 
in her article on terra-cottas, J.R.S., 1915, v.; see also Giuseppe 
Moretti in Atisonia, igi2, vi. pp. 147 ff. 

^* See C. Fries, ' Studien zur Odyssee,' in Mittheilungen der 
Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 19 10, pp. 4 ff. 

^^ C. Fries, op. cit., p. 19. This is the passage which I had In 
mind in describing the Roman triujnphator on p. 64. With regard 
to the triumphal chariot. Fries remarks that chariot and horses were 
the attributes of the Sun, and recalls H. Winckler's theory that their 
nvimbtr four possibly represented the four Seasons. 



270 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

^^ Catalogue of the Museo CapitoUno^ by members of the British 
School at Rome, p. 122, Galleria, No. 48« ('Sepulchral Monuments 
of the Rupilii ')• 

"'' Delia Seta, Religio7i and Art, p. 231, gives a different reason for 
the reappearance of the frontal figure in Hellenistic and Roman times, 
and thinks that it was consciously adopted as affording more scope 
for the reproduction of individual expression. 

^^ Furtwangler in his discussion of the Adamklissi monument has 
well shown the importance of this class of sculpture as representing 
an old Italian strain, but he believed that this art was limited to the 
provinces and to those cities where the Roman legionaries had set up 
the tombs of their comrades. In point of fact this military or 
provincial sculpture, as Furtwangler called it, is simply the art of the 
Roman tombstone as we find it in Rome itself from the last century 
of the Republic onward. 

^'■^ CoUignon, Statues Fimerai7-es, pp. 346-78, ' Figures couchees.' 
See my article on the terra-cottas in the Museo di Villa Giulia, 
J.R.S., 191 5) V. p. 161, for the group on a sarcophagus from Cervetri. 

i*"^ The statue was found in 191 1, behind the Abbey of Tre Fontane, 
and published by Ghislanzoni, Notizie Scavi, 191 2, p. 38. For a 
similar sarcophagus lid, with a boy reclining on a bed, from Torre 
Nuova, see Rizzo, Notizie Scavi, 1905, p. 408. It is a lifelike portrait 
of the second century (incised pupils) ; the boy, with his chubby round 
face and short nose, has none of the aristocratic beauty of our little 
Augustan prince, though here again the excellence of the workman- 
ship suggests that the portrait is that of a boy of illustrious parentage. 

1"! Gummerus in Arch. Jahrbuck, 1913, pp. 63-126. 

102 Warde-Fowler, Religious Experience of the Romaft People ; the 
chapter on ' Mysticism ' is of capital importance. 

103 Yox the influence of Posidonius see Warde-Fowler, The 
Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 382 : 'The person 
really responsible for the tendency to this kind of mysticism was 
undoubtedly the great Posidonius, philosopher, historian, traveller, 
who more than any other man dominated the Roman world of 
thought in" the first half of the last century B.C., and whose writings, 
now surviving in a few fragments only, lie at the back of nearly all 
the serious Roman literature of his own and indeed of the following 
age.' • Cumont, Oriental Religions, p. 164 : 'The works of that erudite 
and rehgious writer influenced the development of the entire Roman 



NOTES 271 

theology more than anything else.' Again, the influence of 
Posidonius not improbably filtered to Vergil, and helped him to 
remould the old traditional conception of an underworld. 

^"^ I ought perhaps to say ' unique ' as a funeral procession. I do 
not forget the elaborate funeral rites depicted on the tomb of the 
Haterii (7?./?., iii. 285, 286). 

105 jtqj. ^jjg literature see my article in /.R.S., 191 5, v. pp. 153-156. 

^"^ Robert Eisler, Weltemiimitel und Himmelzelt^ 2 vols., Munich, 
1911. 

1"^ The starred mantle is seen floating behind the deified Empresses 
Sabina and Faustina, who, on the coins struck in honour of their 
Deification, appear mounting to Heaven — the one on the peacock, the 
other on the eagle (plate ix. 2, from casts kindly given to me by 
Mr. G. F. Hill). 

^*'* See F. Cumont, ' Les idees du paganisme romain sur la vie 
future' in Bibliothcque de Vulgarisation du Musce Gui)>iet, 19 10 
(xxxiv.), and the same writer's Theologie Solaire du Paganisme^ p. 3. 

^"^ These ideas were by no means limited to the official circles of 
benefactors of the State. Cicero, when planning a tomb for Tullia, 
wished to avoid the appearance of a mausoleum, so that nothing 
might detract from the idea of her ' Apotheosis ' : ' Fanum fieri nolo, 
neque hoc mihi erui potest. Sepulcri similitudinem effugere non tam 
propter poenam legis studeo quam ut quam maxime adsequar 
dvodecoa-tv' (ad Att, xii. 361) ; i.e., in other words, Cicero did not wish 
for the ordinary type of tomb, but for a shrine which might proclaim 
the idea of Tullia's admission among the gods. 



IV 

LECTURE III 

^ Before the eagle became messenger of the Sun he may have been 
regarded as eSos of the soul, more especially of the souls of departed 
monarchs. What more natural than to suppose that the majestic and 
solitary bird with its piercing vision and grandiose swoop was chosen 
as his habitat by the soul of the departed sovereign ? The eagle's 
long flight till he becomes a mere speck and then disappears in the 
upper regions of the air might well suggest the flight of a royal soul 



272 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

to the stars. In time it was only natural to modify this cruder con- 
ception of the eagle as the actual soul into that of the messenger that 
carries the soul back to a Divine Master. At a later date, the eagle 
would pass, like the whole doctrine of Apotheosis, into the service of 
lesser personages also. 

^ I have discussed these medallions inJ.R.S., 191 1, i. pp. 16 ff., 
where see references. See also the Catalogue of the Mos/ra Archeo- 
logica nelle Tenne di Dioclesiano, pp. 52, 60, 61. 

^ See my article on Antistius and Antistia m J.R.S., 1915, v. pp. 
147-152. 

* By the great kindness of Mr. Arthur H. Smith. The medallion 
was acquired in 1914, with a number of other objects formerly in the 
collection of General Montresor of Denne Hill, near Dover, in Kent, 
and is said to have been brought to England from Rome in the middle 
of the eighteenth century. 

^ These altars can be conveniently studied in Altmann, Romische 
Grabaltdre der Kaiserzeit, 1905. 

® Frazer, Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 419. 

^ M. Franz Cumont drew my attention to this instance of Apothe- 
osis. The meaning of the Spalato frieze has been overlooked. 

^ Niemann, der Palast Diokletians in Spalato, 1910, plate iv., also 
fig. vi. I, p. 115. 

" Students who have no time for Cumont's large work are referred 
to his smaller Mithras (Eng. ed. 191 2), from which I have mainly 
drawn my short account of the Mithraic cults and monuments. 
' The mysteries exerted a powerful influence in fostering some of the 
most exalted aspirations of the human soul : the desire for immor- 
tality and the expectation of final justice. The hopes of life beyond 
the tomb which this religion instilled in its votaries were one of the 
secrets of its power in these troublesome times when solicitude for 
life to come disturbed all minds ' {Mithras, p. 148). See also H. 
Stuart- J ones in Quarterly Review, 19 14. 

^^ This piece which comes from Heddernheim is of great import- 
ance for its imagery (see the references in Reinach). The cap on a 
pole between Sol and Mithras has been correctly explained by Eisler 
as the do-repcaros ttiXo? — the emblem of the sky or the cosmos. The 
animals pictured as rushing upward, on the surface of the monument 
above the cave, are conceived as springing from the blood of the slain 
bull. 



NOTES 273 

" Roman Sculpture, pp. 309-312 (plate xcv. for the fine stele from 
Osterburken). 

^^ Published Oesterr. Jahreshefte, I909> xii. fig. 114 (Hofmann) ; and 
Beiblatt, p. 213, for Cumont's interpretation of the reliefs above the 
niche ; cf also his Astrology and Religion, pp. 192 ff. 

^' J.R.S., i. p. 19 and references. 

^* See above, p. 151, and note^ 43, 69 to Lecture II. The lion motive 
is very common, but I may mention here two striking examples : 
A stele at Mayence (Weynand, 124) with the apotropaic Medusa in 
the pediment ; beneath, a crouching lion on each side of a pine cone. 
Another from Aumale in Algeria (R. Cagnat in Strena Hellbigiana) 
shows a husband and wife and two children, and above two lions 
guarding the sacred banquet. Cumont, Textes et Monuments, ii. p. 
527, inclines to recognise these groups as Mithraic (though see ibid.^ 
p. 440). The lion and bull motive was, as we have seen, very ancient, 
and was current in Asia Minor, etc., long before the introduction of 
Mithraism from Persia ; but it seems reasonable to suppose that its 
extraordinary vogue on later Roman tombstones was due to the 
popular Mithraic cult where the lion had so prominent a role. 

^^ Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (3rd ed., 1907), p. 146. 

^^ For Attis see Hepding, Attis und seine Mythen, 1903 ; Cumont 
in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Attis. 

1" Cumont, Oriental Religions, p. 59. 

1* J.R.S., i. p. 17, note 3. 

13 For the connection between omphalos and tholos see Rohde, 
Psyche, 4th ed., i. p. 132 ; against it, Di^ls in Miscellanea Salinas (1907), 
p. 14. For the pine cone over graves see Pfuhl in Jahrb., 1905, 
pp. 88 ff. In the relief at Munich, of a peasant driving his cow to 
market, the pine cone over the gate of the Priapic Sanctuary must 
be placed there as emblem of generation. At the same time it cannot 
be asserted that all cones and conical emblems necessarily derive 
from the pine cone or the phallus, cf G. F. Hill in Church Quarterly 
Review, 1908 (Ixvi.), p. 131. For the phallos on graves see examples 
cited by Gruppe, ii. p. 266, note 2. 

20 C.I.L., xiv. 3046-3310 ; dixid Ephemeris Epigraphica, ix. pp. 449 ff., 
Nos. 79-871. The material is a local calcareous stone. In a few 
cases, always of women's tombs, the cones are replaced by statues, in 
one or two by pillars. A reconstruction of this ancient cemetery 
would form an admirable college thesis. 

S 



274 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

^* The Persian origin of Orpheus seems now fairly estabUshed by 
R. Eisler in Weltemnantel u. Hinimelzelt. This book contains an 
expose of Orphic doctrine, its origins and its ends. The same author's 
four papers on 'Orpheus the Fisher,' in the Quest, vols. i. and ii., 
1909 and 1910, are full of curious information and theory which bear 
on the eschatology of Orphism, and therefore indirectly on late Roman 
sepulchral imagery. The literature that has gathered round Orpheus 
of late years is immense, and the subject daily gains in attraction ; 
but the book that shall bring together all the evidence, monumental 
and literary, and also draw conclusions therefrom — somewhat on the 
plan of Cumont's great work on Mithras — is still lacking. I myself 
hope to make an insignificant contribution to the subject by a list of 
all Roman sepulchral monuments representing Orpheus or affected 
by Orphic beliefs. In the present lectures I have had perforce to 
content myself with giving the barest indications. All study of 
Orphism must necessarily be based on the monumental work of two 
German scholars, E. Rohde in Psyche, and Gruppe in his Religions- 
geschichte and in the exhaustive article ' Orpheus ' contributed by him 
to Roscher's Lexikon ; for the Orphic hymns see Dieterich, Hymni 
Orphici ; the latest discussion of the Orphic tablets is by Delatte in 
the Musee Beige for 191 2, where references to previous literature are 
given ; the various papers on Orpheus by S. Reinach in Mythes, 
Cultes et Religions, and his paper on Orphic eschatology in Strena 
Helbigia7ia should likewise be consulted. In England a good deal 
of interesting work, based in a measure on foreign research, has lately 
been done. See especially an eloquent and lucid resume in James 
Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 92 (Lecture v., ' Orphic Religious 
Ideas'), and F. M. Cornford's paper on Orphism and the Pytha- 
gorean Schools in From Religion to Philosophy, p. 160 onwards (espe- 
cially Section vi., 'The Mystical Tradition'). The Asiatic Dionysos, 
by G. W. M. Davis, suffers from the author's failure to cite original 
authorities — not even Eisler being mentioned for the Persian deriva- 
tion of Orphism. Recently Orpheus and Orphism have been brought 
into fresh prominence by the researches of the St. Andrews school — 
and notably of Mr. A. E. Taylor — into the sources of Platonic or, 
according to these scholars, Socratic mysticism and eschatology. In 
his Varia Socratica (Oxford, 191 1), p. 268, Taylor has the following 
striking passage : ' Behind Socrates ... we dimly discern the half- 
obliterated features of Pythagoras of Samos, and behind Pythagoras 
we can only just descry the mists which enclose whatever may be 
hidden under the name of Orpheus. And behind Orpheus, for us at 
least, there is only the impenetrable night.' If the role played by 
Orphism, in what the world will doubtless continue to call the 



NOTES 275 

Platonic philosophy, is as great as the St. Andrews school claims, the 
religion of Orpheus is likely to prove the greatest known to the ancient 
world, and we shall not be surprised to find the reflection of its 
eschatology on the tombstones of the late Roman or Graeco-Roman 
period. That its role in the religions of the later Empire was very 
important we must all be convinced — though not enough has been done 
towards defining it and correlating it to kindred cults. Of these the 
principal was Mithraism, which, owing to Cumont's brilliant series of 
books, has perhaps held the field too exclusively of late years. 

22 Mostra Archeologica Cat, p. 56 ; y.T?.^'., i. p. 18. 

2^ F. M. Cornford, From Religio7i to Philosophy, p. 197. 

2* Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, p. 294. 

25 Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, pp. loi ff.; on Orpheus and 
Dionysus see further Gruppe in Roscher, iii. pp. mo ff. On the 
connection of Attis and Dionysus see Cumont, Oriental Religions, 
p. 48; on the Thracian Dionysus see especially the monograph of 
Foucart, 'Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique,' in Mem. de I'Acad. des 
Inscrr., 1904 (xxxvii.), pt. 2, pp. i ff. ; and Gruppe in Roscher, iii. 
p. 1084 f. 

2^ See the excellent reconstructions of these tombs in E. Kriiger's 
Kurzer Fiihrer durch das Provinziahnuseum in Trier, 191 1. 

2" J.R.S., i. p. 22 ; Koepp, Romer in Deutschland, 2nd ed., fig. 133. 
The Dioscuri are favourite figures, on sepulchral reliefs, as is natural 
from the fact that their cult is developed out of that of the heroised 
dead (Furtwangler in Coll. Saboiiroff, and in Roscher), and that they 
never lost their connection with the underworld ; a good instance is 
R.R., ii. 129, 2 — on the lower half the Dioscuri with their horses ; above 
the bust of Sol or Mithras within a wreath between two genii. In 
an age of syncretism they seem to get confused with the mysterious 
Thracian riders, who are beings of similar origin, since one of the 
commonest forms in which the dead were conceived was as horsemen. 
The Thracian horsemen appear on certain stelae at Sofia (G. Kazarno 
in Archiv. fiir Religionswiss., 1912 (xv.), Nos. 4 and 8), where 
the riders stand on each side of a female divinity trampling over 
a fallen figure — in symbol of victory over the powers of evil rather 
than over any mortal foe. The sanctity of the scene is emphasised 
by the woman on the left with her hand to her lips {favete Unguis). 
The Dioscuri appear carved on the funeral chariot of a relief of 
Constantinian date in British Museum {R.R., ii. 509, i). The connec- 
tion of the Dioscuri with the purifying forces of fire (Gruppe, ii. p. 727) 
also accounts in measure for their popularity as emblems on graves. 



276 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

^^ Koepp, fig. 134. Appositely enough, the labour is the chaining of 
Cerberus. On the front of the aedicula between two hangings appear 
the deified figure of the deceased — a woman — with a Hbation cup in 
her hand and the peacock at her feet. 

^" Aeneas : J. R.S., i. p. 18, note 3. It is remarkable that on the 
other face of the Intercisa stele we have the subject of Bellerophon, 
the old Lycian symbol of Apotheosis. 

^^ Rhea Silvia, Mostra Archeologica Cat., p. 69. 

^^ On the sacred marriage of the soul, cf. Gruppe, ii. p. 865 ; C, 
Pascal, Credense, i. pp. 99 fif.; also Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore^ 
pp. 547 ff., on the conception of death as a lepos yajmoy. 

^^ The translation of these lines has baffled Prior, Pope, Byron, 
Merivale, and Christina Rossetti. To all these versions I prefer the 
one given in the text kindly done for me by Mr. Hugh Dorrell, a 
student of our school. There seems no reason to doubt, as some 
have done, the genuineness of the lines or their attribution to Hadrian, 
cf. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 293. 

^^ J. H. Cabott, Stucchi figiirati esistenti in un antico sepolcro 
fuori delle mitra di Ro7iia, 1795. 

^■* The best publication is still that of Petersen in Annali delP Isii- 
tuto ArcheoL, i860, p. 384 ; 1861, p. 190. For certain details of the 
stucco decorations see Ronscewski, Gewolbeschmuck, plates xvii., xviii., 
XX., and fig. 17, p. 30 ; fig. 20, p. 34. 

^^ See the plates in Cabott (above, note 33). 

^^ C.I.L., vi. p. 3418, and references. 

^'' AyiticMta di Roma, ii. plate xxx. Cf Ashby in B.S.R., i. pp. 
156 fif. : ' Stuccoes from the ceiling of a tomb octagonal above, circular 
below, near Tor de' Schiavi.' 

3^ Ronczewski, Gewolbeschmuck, plate xxiii. ; Piranesi, ii. plate xxxiii. 

^' Ashby in B.S.R., vii. pp. 19, 20, 34 ; cf. Amelung in Atti delta 
Reale Accadeviia Ponteficia for 19 10, pp. 203 fF. 

*•* P. S. Bartoli, Picturae antiquae cryptarmn Romanorum et 
Scpulcri Nasiojiioruni. The pictures in the British Museum appear to 
have been purchased from George Richmond, R.A., in 1885 ; see my 
article in B.S.R., 1915, vii. p. 316, note 3. 

*^ Pyramid of Cestius : Piranesi, Antichita, iii. plate xlviii. ; cf. 
Nardini, Roma Antica, iv. plate i. 



NOTES 277 

*^ Von Sybel, Christliche Ajitike, i. p. 187 ; E. Samter in Rom. 
Mitth. 1893 (viii.), p. 134 ; Nilgson, Archiv. fiir Religionsiuiss., p. 543. 

^^ Ashby and Newton in B.S.R., and my notes, ibid., pp. 469 ff. 

** Vigna Nardi, Studi Romania \. pp. 355 ff. (Fornari). 

*= Tomb near S. Sebastiano. 

■^^ See B.S.R., 1914 (vii.), pp. 1-62 and plates i.-xxiv. 

*" Discovered in 191 1, and published, with elaborate commentary, 
by O. Marucchi in Bidletino di Archeologia Cristiana, i()i i, pp. 201 ff. ; 
cf. Delbrueck in Arch. Ans., 1912, pp. 293 ff., figs. 12, 13, 14. 

** Photo Moscioni ; Piranesi, Antichita, iii. plate xiv. ; Canina, iv. 
plate 277. 

^^ I cannot help recalling here the many beautiful tombs at Poz- 
zuoli, the ancient Puteoli, near Naples, which, like so many of the 
Roman tombs, have been allowed to perish miserably and to dis- 
appear. Even when the tomb still exists, the subjects represented 
have become undecipherable. Fortunately a number were engraved by 
Paoli in his Antiquitates Piiteolanae ; see especially plates xxxii., xxxiv. 
Here also were to be seen the familiar winged figures, friezes of sea 
monsters, the rape of the soul, and the sacred marriage typified by 
Rhea Sylvia. See also Charles Dubois, Poszuoles Antiques., Tombeaux., 
pp. 349-355. For the fine painted decorations of tombs in Naples see 
Alonuineftti Antichi., 1898 (viii.). 

^'' For the cock on tombs see note 27 to Lecture II. The lines from 
Prudentius are quoted from Weicker, Ath. Mitth., xxx. p. 301. The 
symbolism of the cock persists into Christian times. On a fragmen 
of tissue (sixth century imitation of a Coptic model) from the treasury 
of the Sancta Sanctorum, now in the Library of the Vatican (see P. 
Lauer in Momnnents Piot, 1906 (xv.), plate xvii.), we see the cock 
wearing the nimbus as herald of resurrection (?) within a corona 
triumphalis (.?). M. Lauer appositely recalls the two ' cocks facing ' on a 
tissue of the thirteenth centurj'^, explained by Madame Isabelle Errera 
{Collection d anciennes c'tojfes, p. 10, No. 16) as symbols of the sun. 
In Japan the cock is likewise held to symbolise the sun. Possibly no 
emblem combines more meanings into itself. A good instance of the 
apotropaic cock, with further allusion, it may be, to resurrection and 
to this bird's connection with the sun, occurs on the stele of Antiphanes 
at Athens (star or sun ? in background). Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire 
dc P Art antique., viii. p. 661, fig. 339. 



278 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

*^ English and Scottish Popular Ballads^ ed. Child and Kittredge, 
p. i68. 

52 Mostra, p. 65 ; J.R.S., i. p. 19 ; C.I.L., iii. 10,514. 

5^ Stele of Mussius, C.I.L., vi. 22763. 

5* Bruno Schroder in Bonner Jahrbiicher, 1902, p. 67 and note 3. 

5° Hettner, Illust7'ie7'te Fiihrer durch das Provinzialnmseuni in 
Trier, 12% 12^, 12"= (pp. I3ff.); Koepp, Bo?ner in Deutschland, 2nd ed., 
fig. 98 and p. 161. 

*'' Blussus, Koepp, figs. 138, 139 ; inscr. C./.L., xiii. 7067. 

5'" /.B.S., i. p. 14 ; Mostra, p. 59. The interesting inscription is 
now probably published in the last Bericht des Vereins Cartiuntum, 
which I have not seen. 

^^ See also Koepp, Romer in Deutschland, 2nd ed., fig. 96 and p. 
161. 

5^ Koepp, op. cit., fig. 97. 

^^ Cf. Koepp, op. cit., fig. 94. 

^^ The naive shepherding scene which adorns the base of this stele, 
and the quaint epitaph which turns from verse to prose in the writer's 
evident despair of mastering the metre, are also worthy of attention. 
The stele is given by Koepp, fig. 140 and p. 158 ; inscr. C.I.L., xiii. 
7070. For a similar stele, of a suarius, see Notizie Scavi, 1898, p. 479 
and fig. 3. On the upper part appears the inscription ; on the lower 
the suarius, wearing a tunica succincta, drives seven pigs to graze. 

^2 The only German publication of the whole monument seems to 
be that by C. Osterwald of the year 1829 (with preface by Goethe). 
The best reproductions remain those by Laborde in the Monuments de 
France. 

^^ See E. Mogk's ' Baptism ' in E.R.E. For its significance in 
Mithraism and the later Gnostic sects see Bousset, Hauptprobleme 
der Gnosis, ch. vii. (baptism 'originally a magical rite for freeing the 
soul from evil influence,' ibid., p. 294). 

^ Havdmdl, v. 158, quoted by E. Mogk, art. 'Baptism — Teutonic,' 
p. 140 in E.R.E. 

^■^ J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 2nd ed., p. 85. 



NOTES 279 

^^ Every detail of the curious scene has now been made clear by 
Hans Graeven, Jio/u. Mitt.^ 1913 (xxviii.), pp. 271 ff. and plate vii. 
The figure in the funeral chariot drawn by elephants is the Emperor, or 
rather his imago ; the youthful figure in the chariot above the rogus 
is Sol, with the appropriate arching drapery above his head ; above 
again, the Emperor is seen carried from the rogus to heaven by the 
twin brothers Sleep and Death, and is received by five divinities (?) 
who emerge from the clouds at his approach. Graeven has further 
shown it to be more than probable that the deified Emperor is 
Constantius Chlorus. 

*'" Matz-Duhn, Antike Bildiuerke in Rom, 1881, ii. p. 301, No. 
3016. 

®* This stele has been pointed out to me by M. Cumont ; it is 
probably published by now in the last Bericht des Vereins Carnuntum.^ 
which I have not seen. 

^^ See Camille Jullian in his small book Gallia, p. 204 ; cf. J.R.S., 
i. pp. 14 ff. It is satisfactory to note that the beauty and importance 
of the sepulchral art of the land of the Treveri, and its influence over 
later cathedral and other sculpture, is beginning to be acknowledged ; 
cf. H. Thiersch, An den Riindei^n des RomiscJien Reiches, 191 1, pp. 128 
ff. See also the recent discussion of several of these monuments 
(especially from Arlon) by F. Cumont, ' Comment la Belgique fut 
romanisee,' in Annales de la Socicte Royale d'Arckeologie de Bruxelles, 
1914, pp. 82 ff. 



ADDENDA 

p. 7. '• Doinus Flavia'' of Palatine. — Dr, Ashby points out to me 
that, in view of the great interest now attaching to the Palatine and 
its palaces, it may be well to add that even if (as I think probable) 
Vespasian and Titus are responsible for the plan of the Domus 
Flavia, they themselves apparently lived in the old Domus Tiberiana, 
which was simply refaced on the side of the Forum (west), while 
Domitian seems wholly responsible for the great palace connected 
with the name of his dynasty, and left untouched from his time till 
Septimius Severus and Julia Domna added to it on the south. 
Whether Domitian worked on plans already approved by his father 
and brother, and the exact share of Rabirius in the plan, are questions 
that cannot be yet completely cleared up. 

P. 40. For the sculptures from Corfu see also Martin L. d'Ooge in 
Art and Archaeology, 191 5? vol. i. pp. 153-158, with excellent illustra- 
tions. Plate vi. is after his figs, i, 2. 

P. loi. The Art-type of the Christ. — Since writing the above, it 
has become evident to me that the iconography of Christ, especially 
that of the early beardless type, brings us by another road into the same 
cycle of ideas as those developed in my lecture. It is the merit of 
H. Diitschke to have called attention to the resemblance between the 
type of the youthful beardless Christ and the portraiture of Alexander 
{Ravennaiische Studien, 1909, pp. 104 fif., a book I regret not having 
read earlier). The kinship between the two which seems undeniable, 
will cease to surprise us when we remember the beliefs and hopes of 
an apocalyptic-messianic character that centred about Alexander 
looked upon as the ' Prince of Peace ' who was to return and unite 
all mankind under his rule in a brotherhood of love. Thus Alex- 
ander was offered to the imagination of the ancient world as a divine 

280 



ADDENDA 281 

being at once diftering from the gods of the Graeco-Roman Pantheon, 
and in a sense exalted above them to a monotheistic position. What 
wonder that his portraiture, ideaUsed into a type, should influence the 
plastic conception of the Christian God for whom his followers would 
naturally av'oid borrowing the features of any of the abhorred Pagan 
deities. In the matter of the actual central figure, then, as well as in 
the pose and place of that figure, we find the idea of the Monarch- 
God influencing the artistic formulas of the new religion. I may add 
here as an instance of the influence exerted by the Alexander idea 
upon ancient religious imagery, the frequency with which the Roman 
Emperors (Augustus, Nero, Caracalla, Gallienus, and others) were 
represented in the pose of Alexander, or with features actuall}' 
assimilating to his. These ' Alexandroid ' images of Emperors, long 
thought to reflect the madness of the one or the impudent audacity of 
the other, were in absolute conformity with the beliefs of the Roman 
world and implied the attainment of Apotheosis, expressed in this 
case by identifying the deified monarch with the Monarch-God par 
excellence. In another order of beliefs, Commodus is portrayed as 
Heracles, as in the well-known bust of the Conservatori, in sign of 
Apotheosis through identification with Heracles. It is a striking 
thought of Diitschke, and one which throws considerable sidelight on 
the subject of Apotheosis, that the bearded type of our Lord first 
appeared in the scenes of His earthly career, while the youthful 
beardless type was reserved, in the beginning at any rate, for the 
glorified Christ {RavennatiscJie Studien, pp. 120 ff.). 

P. III. The '■Paradiso ' of Tintoretto. — I have often been questioned 
as to this final illustration of my thesis. It was chosen not in the 
least because I personally feel any extraordinary admiration for this 
colossal work, but because so well-balanced and well-constructed a 
grouping of myriad figures around a central motive would, I believe, 
have been impossible in Greek art, or in any art previous to the 
introduction of the centralised principle of composition which first 
appeared to stay in the art of the Roman Empire. 

P. 114. Sepulchral Imagery. — In this connection my cordial thanks 
are due to Professor Haverfield and the Editors of the Journal of 
Roman Studies for allowing me to quote freely from articles con- 
tributed by me to vol. i. and vol. v. of Xht. Journal (especially i., 'The 



282 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

Exhibition illustrative of the Provinces of the Roman Empire, at the 
Baths of Diocletian' ; and v., 'The Decorated Screen on a Relief from 
Amiternum.' See above, pp. 177-180. 

P. 122. Pillars at Taviiili in Sardinia. — I am indebted to Dr. 
Ashby for calling my attention to these. 

P. 129. The Spartan Reliefs. — In addition to the literature quoted 
in the notes, see also Erich Kiister, Die Scklange in der Griechischen 
Kunst und Religion., Giessen, 1913, pp. 76 ff. I regret that this 
excellent monograph was not known to me before. It is the most 
comprehensive treatise that has yet appeared on the beliefs attaching 
to the snake in Greece, on the cult of the hero and the sepulchral 
iconography pertaining thereto (see especially p. 78 for the ^%^ and 
the cock ; p. 75 and p. 82 for the pomegranate). I also note with 
interest that Kiister dismisses the old mythological explanation of the 
Magoula basis {R.R., ii. 362), marked by the snakes on the narrow 
sides as the stele of a 'hero,' and rightly surmises that the scenes of 
the two principal faces refer to events now unknown in the life of the 
occupant of the tomb. 

P. 141. Vergil and Orpheus. — -See on this important point 
Diitschke, op. cit, p. 185. 

P. 1 54. The Sirens as token of the SouPs Survival. — The Sirens, 
as later the Muses which so often appear on Roman sarcophagi, are 
possibly placed on the tomb to ensure to the dead participation in the 
'minstrelsy' which Pindar reckons among the joys that await the 
Blessed (above, p. 140). In the case of the Roman sarcophagi of the 
second century A.D. with figures of Muses, Diitschke {Ravennatische 
Studie?t, 1909, p. 185) shows the absurdity of continuing to explain 
the presence of the Muses by reference to the learned or musical 
attainments of the dead. 

P. 197. Orphic Symbolism. — See also Diitschke, op. cit., pp. 179 iif., 
pp. 185 ff. I would ask those who think I go too far in attributing 
mystic or symbolic meanings to the imagery of the Roman tombs to 
read Diitschke's learned and eloquent pages. I deeply regret that 
his book was not known to me when I prepared or revised the 
lectures. 



ADDENDA 283 

Pp. 201, 207. The Diosatri in Sepiclchral Imagery. — For the 
original connection of the Dioscuri with the underworld see now 
Kiister, op. cit, pp. jy ff. 

P. [213 and p. 277, note 47. To7nb of Trebius Justus. — These 
interesting paintings, unique of their kind, are rapidly becoming 
celebrated ; see O. Wulff, Altchristliche Kimst, 1914, i. p. 69 and fig. 
71 ; C. M. Kaufmann, Handbicch der Christlichen Archdologie, 1913, 
pp. 427 fif. and figs. 164, 165. 

P. 215. Marine monsters as mystic escort of the dead. — Cf. Diitschke, 
op. cit., p. 181. 

P. 222 and plate xxviii. Owing to an error due to the present 
difficulties of postal communication, the relief of Selene in the British 
Museum (Cat. 2166) has been substituted on plate xxviii. i for a sepul- 
chral relief of the same type as the one reproduced on plate xxviii. 2. 
The monument is votive, and therefore does not fall within the 
category of sepulchral reliefs described in the text ; it has, moreover, 
been published by M. Delatte in the Musce Beige., 19135 PP- 321-337. 
Yet in view of its charm and interest I let it stand here. The back- 
ground with the seven planets and the crescent moon recalls the 
stellated canopy of the relief at Amiternum (above, p. 177), while the 
frame adorned with the signs of the Zodiac is very familiar in Mithraic 
altar-pieces (above, p. 188) and in the whole religious and sepulchral 
imagery of the period (above, p. 226 ; p. 228). 

The sepulchral relief from the urn of Cossutia Prima, plate xxviii. 2 
(i?.i?., ii. 671, ^=Brit. Mus. Cat. Sc. 2364), exhibits an interesting 
imagery (pine-tree, eagle, snake, and eagle holding in his beak the 
butterfly as symbol of the soul ; on the front face, Eros driving a 
quadriga, and on the pilasters vine branches springing from vases, in 
addition to a rich and delicate ornamentation which points to the 
Flavian period). 

P. 224. Ah dolor I ibat Hylas.,ibat Enhydryasin. — Propertius, I. xx. 
22. {Corpus Poetarum Latinorum., ed. J. P. Postgate.) 

Pp. 278, 279, notes 57 and 68. I regret that these and certain 
other notes must remain incomplete. But I, in common with many 
others in Rome this year, labour under the great disadvantage of 



284 APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 

having no adequately equipped archaeological library, now that we 
are cut off by political circumstances from the great library on the 
Monte Tarpeo, for so many years the hospitable centre of our studies. 
No city perhaps is so rich as Rome in libraries and in books bearing 
on art and archaeology, but much has to be done in the way of 
co-ordination — a work, I may note, which has been undertaken by 
Commendatore C. Ricci in the library which he has begun to 
organise in connection with the Ministry of Fine Arts. Meanwhile 
the difficulties of hunting up and finding books are great ; and even 
in preparing notes of so modest a compass as the present I was often 
baffled in my researches, nor could I always verify the references 
I had taken down in England. I am once more reminded of my 
debt to Miss Hutton, who with her well-known and often-tried 
liberality has made herself responsible for so much beside the weari- 
some bringing together of the illustrations. 



Note to Plate II. — The Brescia medallion is now dated by C. 
Albizzati {R.M. 1914, xxix., pp. 247 ff. and fig. 3) in the second quarter 
of the third century A.D., by analogy with the portraiture of the period. 
For the women cp. Julia Domna, Julia Mamaea, Otacilia, etc. ; for the 
boy, Gordian ill., Philippus Junior^ etc. The proposed dating is 
confirmed by the lettering of the inscription. 



INDEX 



ADAMKLISSI, monument of, 171. 

Adventus Augusti, 109. 

AEGINA, temple of Aphaia at, 41, 

44. 
Aefernitas, 88. 
Ahenobarbus, Gn. Domitius, basis of, 

58. 
Aion (Spirit of Eternity), 89. 

Alcantara, bridge of, 25. 

Alexander the Great, 56 ; ascension 
of, 107. 

Alexandria, stelae from, 158. 

Alxenor of Naxos, stele by, 159. 

AMITERNUM, relief from, 175, 179. 

Amulets, 163, 164. 

ANCYRA, temple at, 71. 

Antiochus of Commagene, 87. 

Antistius, funeral slab of, 184. 

AOSTA, ivory diptych, 104. 

APAMEA. See Frikya. 

Aphrodite, 177. 

Apollo, 177. 

Apollo-Mithras, 87. 

' ApoUos.' See Kouroi. 

Apollodorus, 28. 

Apotheosis: of Alexander, 108; of 
Heracles, 147, 226 ; Imperial, 30, 
61, 65 ; of Julius Caesar, 67 ; of 
Sabina, 88 ; of Antoninus and 
Faustina, 89 ; of Marcus Aurelius, 
90 ; of Constantius Chlorus, 227. 

AQUILEIA, silver disc from, 82, 106. 

Ara Pads Augustae, 59. 

Arcadius, 105. 

Arch : of Constantine, 33 ff. ; of Titus, 
83 ; of Galerius, 99. 



Archermos, Nike of, 41. 
Architecture : American, 27 ; Roman, 

Aristocles, stele by, 133. 

ARLES, S. Trophime, 36, 149. 
Museum : stele, 216. 

ARLON (Museum), tombstones, 201, 
220. 

Art : Alexandrian, 7 ; Antiochene, 7 ; 
Byzantine, 4 ; Christian, 33, 38, 
60 (see also Mediaeval) ; Etruscan 
(see Italic) ; Etrusco-Roman, 65 ; 
Greek, 38, 39-58; Hellenistic, 11, 
56-60 ; Italic, 1 1 ; Latin (see Italic) ; 
Mediaeval, 50, 60 (see also Chris- 
tian) ; Pergamene, 7, 9, 57 ; 
Seleucid, 7. 

Artemis, 177. 

Ashby, Dr. T,, 212, 218. 

Athens : 

Acropolis : archaic temples on, 42. 

Ceramicus: stele of Dexileos, loi, 
133 ; stele of Hegeso, 133 ; stele of 
Pamphile and Demetria, 136. 

Dipylon : graves, 137. 

National Museum : stelae : by Aris- 
tocles, 133; by Alxenor, 159; 
from Chrysapha, 131, 135 ; from 
Peiraeus, 135; from Thebes, 159; 
from wall of Themistocles, 135 ; 
of Eutamia, 135; of Lyseas, 134; 
of Telesias, 133. — Relief from 
Eleusis, 54. 
Attis, 195 ; fruit of pine tree sacred to, 

195- 
Attis-Men, 177. 



286 



APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 



Augustus, 6, 7, 13 ; deified on Grand 
Camee de France, 69, 70 ; and 
Lares, altar in Florence, 80 ; and 
Roma enthroned, 71. 

Aurelian, 13, 213. 

Babylon, temple of Marduk at, 
168. 

Baptism (of Achilles), 225. 

Barberini ivory, the, 18, loi. 

Basilica Nova, 25, 28. 

Baths : of Caracalla, lo, 25 ; of Dio- 
cletian, 10. 

Bell, Miss G. Lowthian, quoted, 8 ff. 

Benevento, arch of Trajan at, 85, 93, 
98. 

BERLIN : 
Royal Museum : stelae : from 
Chrysapha, 41, 130; of Metro- 
doros, 154. 
Antiquarium : sepulchral stone from 
Sardis, 122; cylix v^^ith Selene 
sinking, 38. 
Kaiser Friedrich Museum : ivory 
with coronation of Leo vi., 102. 

Blessed : banquet of the, 146 ; joys of 
the, 129; Isles of the, 135, 186, 
192, 215. 

Blussus, stele of, 217. 

Boatmen, stelae of, 216-218. 

Boeotia, cult of dead in, 159, 

Boni, Comm. Giacomo, 120. 

BORSIPPA, temple of Nebo at, 168. 

Boscoreale, cups from, 73. 

Boston (Museum), Boston throne, 
150; Attic lekythos, 138. 

Brescia (Museum), portrait (on 
glass) of Imperial lady and her 
children, 29. 

British Museum: bronze phalera 
from Elis, 38, 229 ; ivory with Apo- 
theosis, 179 ; Parthenon, pediments 
of, 47 ; frieze of, 54 ; Harpy tomb, 
148, 149, 157,159; Nereid monu- 
ment, 153, 219; sculptures of 
Mausoleum, 219 ; Lycian stele, 150; 
steleof Xanthippos, 133 ; tombs of 



Merehiand Payava, 152, 223 ; from 
acropolis of Xanthos, 151 ; sarco- 
phagi from Clazomenae, 145, 154; 
medallion portraits : of Antistius 
and Antistia, 184 ; of Flavian 
period, 185; Selene relief from 
Argos, 283. 

Bud A-PEST, sarcophagus from Aquin- 
cum, 202 ; stele of Nertus, 215. 

Bull, Mithraic, 188 ff. 

Caesar, Julius, Apotheosis of, 61, 

67 ; divine honours rendered to, 64. 
Cameos : with Apotheosis, 67 ; Grand 

Camee de France, 68, 89 ; Gemma 

Angus tea, 71. 
Campus Martins on Antonine basis, 

89. 
Canopy, starred, 177. 
Capanne, 163. 
Capricorn, sign of, 72. 

Capua, i6i. 

CarNUNTUM : stele of Marcus An- 

tonius Basilides at, 217; Mithraic 

stele at, 228. 
CERVETRI, Tomba Regolini-Galassi, 

165. 
CHALCIS (Museum), pediment from 

temple of Apollo at Eretria, 46. 
Chariot : of Elijah, 126, 147, 227 ; of 

Sun, 64, 91, 168, 226 ; of Heracles, 

226 ; of trinmphator, 64, 168 ; 

transit of the soul in, 126. 
Chartres (Cathedral), tympanum 

of, 36, 106. 

Chateau Gaillard, 8. 

CHATSWORTH, stele of Herennia 
Syrisca, 160. 

Chicago, station of, 27. 

Choisy, A., quoted, 10. 

Christ : on the Barberini ivory, loi ; on 
the tympanum of Chartres, 36, 
106; on a sarcophagus at Verona, 
100. 

Christianity, 205. 

Chrysapha, stelae from, 41, 129- 
131. 135- 



INDEX 



287 



Cicero, shrines offered to, 63 ; ' Dream 

of Scipio,' 62, 178, 204. 
CiVITA CASTELLANA, temple of 

Apollo at, 77. 
Claudius, 22 ; on Julio-Claudian relief, 

79- 

CLAZOMENAE, sarcophagi from, 145, 

154- 
Columbarium : of Pomponius Hylas, 

211 ; at Villa Pamphili, 21 1. 
Columns : of Antoninus and Faustina, 

89 ; of Marcus Aurelius, 90 ; of 

Nero at Mayence (see Jupiter) ; of 

Trajan, 23, 85. 
Communion, Mithraic, 189, 222. 
Congiarium, on arch of Constantine, 

35> 104. 
Constantine, arch of, 85 ; period of, 109. 

Constantinople, basis of Theo- 

dosius at, 104 ; Santa Sophia, 10, 

109. 
Museum : frieze from temple of 

Lagina, 57; sarcophagi f rom Sidon: 

of Alexander, 49, 55 ; of mourning 

women, 151 ; of the Satrap, 154; 

stelae: from Saloniki, 160; from 

Thasos, 157. 
Corfu, pediment from temple at, 40, 

280. 
Corona: civica, 185; immortalis, 185; 

triumphalis, 183, 228. 
Crusades, influence of, on art, 8. 
Cumont, Franz, quoted, 4, 61, 1S2, 188, 

192. 
Cybele, 105, 146. 
Cyprus (Nicosia), silver plate, 107. 

Dalton, O. M., quoted, 107. 

Dante, and Imperial Idea, 2. 

Death, an initiation, 198 ; as hiero- 

gamy, 202. 
Defensor Fidei, 17. 
Delia Seta, Alessandro, quoted, 30, 31, 

32, 88, 105, III. 
Delphi, treasury of Cnidians, 43. 
Diocletian : period of, 13 ; on basis in 

Forum, 94 ; on lead medallion. 



96 ; commemorated on arch of 
Constantine, 34 ; portrait of, 187. 

Dionysus, 54, 177, 200. 

Discs : of Theodosius, 105 ; Valen- 
tinian, 103 ; Justinian, 108. 

Domitian on relief in Louvre, 84. 

Domus Flavia (Palatine), 7, 280. 

Diirer, Albert, Sudarium by, 52. 

Elagabal, 93, 

Elijah, 126, 147, 227. 

ELIS, phalera from, 38, 229. 

Empire, Rome's ideal of, 17. 

Engelmann, R., 212. 

Ennius, 62. 

EPHESUS, relief with Apotheosis of 

Marcus Aurelius, 90. 
Epikteta, testament of, 158. 
ERETRIA, temple of Apollo at, 46. 
Esperandieu, Comm. Emile, 114. 
Esquiline, fresco from, 168. 
ETON College, Topham collection 

of drawings at, 212. 
Eurydice, 198. 
Evans, Sir Arthur, quoted, 117, 128. 

FALERI VETERES. See Civita 

Castellana. 
Fire, purifying force of, 192, 194, 199. 
Flamininus, 63. 
Florence, Uffizi, altar of Augustus 

and Lares, 80. 
Frazer, Sir J. G., quoted, 194, 227, 
FRIKYA, tomb at, 182. 
Frontality, 31, 36. 
Frothingham, A. L,, quoted, 32, 94. 
Furniture of tomb, 126. 
Furtwangler, Adolf, quoted, 43. 

Galerius, arch of, 99. 

Ganymede, 187, 229. 

GARD, Pont du, 25. 

Gardner, Prof. P. G., quoted, 53, 134. 

Gegenkaiser, the, lOO. 

Geneva, silver disc of Valentinian at, 

103. 
Ghost, 116, 117, 122. 



288 



APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 



GlESSEN, papyrus of, 91. 
GJOLBASCHI-TRYSA, Heroon at, 

152, 208. 
Gorgon, on pediment at Corfu, 40. 
GRADO, stele of boy at, 187. 
Grave reliefs. See Stelae. 
GRAZ (Museum), medallion portrait 

of centurion, 183 ; of man and 

wife, 183. 
GROTTAFERRATA, Greek stele at, 

136. 

Hadrian, Emperor, 28, 88, 112, 205. 

HAGHIA TRIADA, sarcophagus from, 
119, 120, 125, 148, 165, 167, 228. 

HALICARNASSUS, Mausoleum of, 
115, 219. 

Harpy tomb, 148, 157, 159. 

Helena, portrait of, 24. 

Helios on phalera in British Museum, 
38, 108. See also Sun. 

Hellenism, fate of, in Rome, 13. 

Heracles, Apotheosis of, 156, 226. 

'iri.exm.&s psyc/ioj>o?>ipos, 186, 215. 

HIERAPOLIS, 182. 

Hierogamy, 202, 209. 

Hogarth, D. G., quoted, 13, 155. 

Holbein, 184. 

Homer, 155, 161; conception of under- 
world, 132. 

Homeric poems, influence of, 132, 139. 

Honorius, on ivory diptych, 104 ; on 
silver disc at Madrid, 105. 

Horace, quoted, 70, 76, 77, 86, 204. 

Hunt, Leigh, quoted, 141. 

Hylas, rape of, 224. 

Iamblichus, quoted, 194. 

Igel, tomb at, 144, 222 fif. 

Immortality, 139, 181, 187, 198, 211. 

Incineration, 125. 

Inhumation, 125. 

Ionia, 151, 155, 157. 

Isles of the Blest, 186, 215. 

Judaic monotheism, loo. 
Julia Domna, 80, 92. 



Julian, 227. 

Juno on column of Mayence, 81. 

Jupiter, 64, 74, 78, 82, 85, 93; mono- 
theism latent in, 79, 86, 1 10; 
column of, at Mayence, 81 ; * and 
Giant columns,' 86 ; abdication 
of, to emperor, 85; supplanted by 
Elagabal, 93. 

Justinian, 109. 

Kers [Keres], 145, 173. 
KLAGENFURT (Museum), medallion 

portrait of man and wife, 184. 
Koiiroi, 123. 

LAGINA, temple of Hecate at, 57. 
Lamb of God, on early mosaics, 98. 
Lang, Andrew, quoted, 140. 
Lares, cult of, 66, 80; on column of 

Mayence, 81. 
Latium, art of, 11. See under Art. 
Livia, enthroned, on Grand Camee, 69; 

on altar of Lares, 80. 
Livingstone, R. W. , quoted, 19. 
London. See British Museum. 
Ludovisi throne, 37, 53, 149. 
LUNI, pediments from, at Florence, 

78. 
Lycian tombs, 150 ff. 

Macedonia, cult of dead in, 159. 

Mackail, J. W., quoted, 21, 24. 

Madrid, silver disc at, 105. 

Magna Mater, 190. 

Maiestas, Christian, 17, 32, 36, 79, III. 

Mandorla, 36. 

Manes, altar to, 185. 

Mantle, starred, 177. 

Marcellus, deified, 69. 

Marcus Aurelius, 34 ; column of, 89. 

Marduk, temple of, 168. 

MAROS NEMETI, sepulchral monu- 
ment, 192. 

Marriage of David, on silver plate at 
Nicosia, 107. 

Marriage, sacred, death as. See Hiero- 
gamy. 



INDEX 



289 



Mars, 74, 95, 97 ; on basis in temple 

of Neptune, 58. 
Mars Ultor, temple of, 78. 
MAYENCE (Mainz) : 

Museum: column of Jupiter, 61, 81 ; 

stele of Blussus, 217 ; stele with 

family repast, 220 ; sepulchral 

aedicula, 201. 
Picture of, on lead medallion, 97. 
Medallions : of Valens and Valentinian, 

103 ; of Justinian, 109 ; of city of 

Mayence, 96. 
Melkarth, 227. 
Mithraic banquet, 189, 22 1 ; bull, 1 88 ff. , 

193- 
Mithraism, 187-197. 
Mithras : wears cosmic mantle, 177 ; 

ascension of, 189; cults of, 113; 

on Diocletianic basis, 95. 
Moguntiacuni. See Mayence. 
Monolatric principle in art, 32, 41, 98. 
Monotheism, Judaic, 100 ; in Jupiter, 

79, 86, 1 10 ; in Zeus, 51. 
MONTELEONE, chariot of, 167. 
Moon, cult of, 177, 178 ; on column of 

Mayence, 81. 
Moselle (river), 216. 
Mundtfs (Palatine), 120, 163. 
MUNICH : 
Gljrptothek : sculptures from temple 

at Aegina, 44. 
Antiquarium: pelike with Apotheosis 

of Heracles, 156. 
Murray, Prof. Gilbert, quoted, 21, 51, 

155- 
Museums. See undernames of different 

localities. 
Mycenae, tombs on Acropolis of, 

128, 166. 
Myres, Prof. J. L., 144. 

Naples (Museum), vase with sacri- 
fice to Dionysus, 54. 

Nativity of Aphrodite, 37, 53, 150. 

Nebo, temple of, 168. 

NEMRUD DAGH, tomb of Antiochus 
of Commagene, on the, 87. 



Neolithic peoples, 12. 
Nereids, Monument of, 219. 
Nero, on column of Mayence, Si. 
New York : Pennsylvania station, 

27 ; Grand Central station, 27. 
Metropolitan Museum : chariot 

of Monteleone, 147 ; plate from 

Cyprus, 107 ; sarcophagus from 

Golgoi, 144. 
Nola, 161. 
Nicnun Augusti, 74. 

Oak-wreaths, 185. 

Oikoumene, the, on Gemma Augustea, 

72. 
OLYMPIA, temple of Zeus at, 41, 

46 ; Apollo of W. pediment, 47. 
Olympian religion, character of, ^o- 
Orbis Romanus, 81. 
' Orient or Rome,' cry of, 4. 
Ormuzd, bull of, 188. 
Orpheus, 198. 

Orphic doctrines, 1 13, 139, 141, 180, 197. 
Orphism. See Orphie Doctrines. 

Paintings of Roman tombs, 205-213. 

PALESTRINA. See Praeneste. 

Palestine, Flavian conquest of, 7. 

Pan-Orientalists, 4. 

Pantheon, 12; dome of, 25; the 
Olympian, 50, no, 

Paris : 
Cabinet des Medailles : cameo with 
Apotheosis of Julio- Claudian 
prince, 67 ; Grand Camee de 
France, 68 ; diptych with Christ, 
Romanus and Eudocia, X02 ; lead 
medallion of city of Mayence, 96 ; 
of Justinian (stolen), p. 250, n. 102. 
Louvre : basis of Gn. Domitius 
Ahenobarbus, 58 ; Flavian relief 
with sacrificial scene, 84 ; stele of 
Sosinos, 133 ; portrait of Helena, 
24 ; the Barberini ivory, 18, loi ; 
cylix from Gyrene, 146. 
Rothschild Collection : cups from 
Boscoreale, 73. 



290 



APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 



Parthenon, pediments of, 47 ; frieze of, 

54. 

Pater, W., quoted, 117. 

Pax on column of Mayence, 81. 

Pediment, arcuated, 105, 106. 

PETROGRAD, silver disc at, 108. 

Pheidias, 48. 

Pillar cult, 117. 

Pindar, quoted, 129, 140. 

Pisistratus, 132, 161. 

Plato, quoted, 139. 

Pliny, quoted, 204. 

Plutarch, quoted, 198. 

Polygnotos, 156. 

Pompey, 7, 63. 

Portraits : 'Aesop ' of Villa Albani, 24 ; 
Flavian, 24 ; Antonine, 24 ; of 
Helena, 24 ; late Imperial, 28. 

Portraiture, early Roman (sepulchral), 

77. 
Posidonius of Apamea, 63, 175. 
PRAENESTE, cemetery at, 196. 
Prudentius, quoted, 214. 
Pythagoras, 139, 155, 174. 

Rabirius, 28. 

Rapes (of Proserpina, etc.), 203, 209, 

211, 224. 
Raphael, Madonna di S. Sisto, 52. 
Rss gestae in art, 30, 99, iii, 192, 

223. 
jReve7iant, 116, 117. 
Rhea Silvia, 202, 224. 
Rheims, Beau Dieu of, 51. 
Richard Coeur de Lion, 8. 
Richmond : Cook Collection, stele 

of Archippos, 158. 
Riegl, Dr. Alois, quoted, 94, 99. 
Rivoira, G. T., 10. 
Roma, the goddess, 7l> 95- 
Romans, as foil to Greeks, 19. 
ROME: 
Arches :ofConstantine, 33; of Titus, 

83. 
Basilicas : of Junius Bassus, ofus 
sectile from, 107 ; Basilica Nova, 
25, 28. 



Bridges : Pons Milvius, 9 ; Ponte di 

Nona, 9. 
Forum : Anaglypha Traiani, 99 ; 

Diocletianic basis with relief to 

Mithras, 95 ; Sepolcreto, 163. 
Collections : 

Villa Albani : portrait of ' Ae- 
sop,' 24. 

Palazzo Barberini : sarcopha- 
gus w^ith Apotheosis, 228. 

MusEO Barracco : portrait of 
child, 173. 

Capitoline Museum : tomb- 
stone of Rupilii, 170. 

CoNSERVATORi MusEUM : fresco 
from Esquiline, 168. 

Palazzo del Drago : opus sec- 
tile, 107. 

Villa Giulia : Etruscan sarco- 
phagus, 172; contents of Falis- 
can tombs, 163 ff. 

Lateran : relief of ' Medea and 
Daughters of Pelias,' 54. 

Villa Medici : relief with temple 
of Mars Ultor, 78. 

Palazzo Sacchetti : relief of 
period of Severus, 92. 

Terme Museum : Ara Pads, 59 ; 
Ludovisi throne, 37, 53, 149 ; 
sarcophagus of boy, 172. 

ToRLONiA Museum: relief of 
' Theseus, Heracles and Peiri- 
thoos,' 54. 

Vatican (Galleria Lapidaria) : 
tombstone of L. Cornelius 
Atimetus, 173. 

(Giardino della Pigna): basis 

of Antoninus and Faustina, 
89. 

— — (Braccio Nuovo) : Augustus 
from Prima Porta, 173. 

(Belvedere) : sarcophagus of 

L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatns, 
169 ; altar with Apotheosis of 
Caesar, 66. 

(Galleria delle Statue) : stele 

of athlete, 133. 



INDEX 



291 



Vatican (Rotonda) : Genius of 
Augustus, 70. 

(Museo Gregoriano) : Tomba 

Regolini-Galassi, 165. 

Temples : of Jupiter Capitolinus, 
78; ofMarsUltor, 78; of Neptune, 
58; Pantheon, 12, 25; of Vesta, 
12. 

Tombs : near Acqua Acetosa, 206 ; 
of the baker Eurysaces, 173 ; of 
'Arruntii' and 'Pancratii' on 
Latin Way, 206, 207 ; of Nasonii, 
210 ; of P. Vibius Marianus, 
213; of Trebius Justus, 213; 
of Pomponius Hylas, 211 ; at 
Villa Pamphili, 211; Pyramid of 
Cestius, 211 ; near S. Gregorio, 
210; near S. Sebastiano, 212; in 
Vigna Nardi, 212 ; in Vigna of 
Trappists, 212 ; of the Scipiones 
on Via Appia, 169. 

Velabrum : Gate of Silversmiths, 
92. 

SaBAZIUS, 200. 

Salian priest, 185. 

SALONIKI, arch of Galerius at, 

99- 
Sarcophagi : from Clazomenae, 

145; from Golgoi, 144 ff.; from 

Haghia Triada, 119, 148, 165, 

228 ; Etruscan, at Villa Giulia, 

172 ; Phoenician, 161 ; of L. 

Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, 169. 
From Sidon in Constantinople : 

of Alexander, 49; of the Mourners, 

151 ; of the Satrap, 154. 
Christian, at Verona, 100. 
Sardis, sepulchral stone from, 122. 
Scorpion, sign of the Zodiac, 72. 
Secundinii, tomb of (see also Igel), 

222. 
Selene, on relief from Ephesus, 90 ; 

on relief from Argos, 280 ; on 

cylix in Berlin, 38, 108. 
Selinos, temple at, 40. 
Sepolcrelo in Roman Forum, 163. 



Septimius Severus, on Gate of Silver- 
smiths, 80, 92 ; on Sacchetti re- 
lief, 92. 

Sepulchral Imagery: 

{a) Symbolic Objects and Animals : 
amphorae, 221 ; birds, 222 ; blos- 
soms, 169 ; boar, winged, 210 ; 
boat, 137, 216; bull, 136, 193; 
cock, 131, 145, 214, 215; dolphins, 
229, 230; dog, 136, 145; eagle, 183, 
189 ; egg, 131 , 1 72, 21 1 ; foliage, 222; 
four elements, 188 ; Gorgoneion, 
183, 224 ; grapes, 199 ; griffin, 151, 
209, 213, 221 ; horse, 135 ; horse, 
winged, 69 ; kantharos, 221 ; lion, 
146, 192, 193 ; lion and bull, 
151, 192-195 ; Medusa head (see 
Gorgoneion) ; pine-cone, 193, 196; 
pomegranate, 131 ; rosette, 169, 
185 ; sea monsters, 216; Seasons, 
201, 228; Siren, 115, 146, 150- 
154 ; snake, 130, 193 ; vannus, 
209 ; winds, 192, 226, 229; wreath, 
186. 

{b) Figures : Aeneas, 202 ; Attis, 
195; Bacchic figures, 199, 210; 
Dioscuri, 209 ; Eris, 192 ; Gany- 
mede, 229 ; genii, 209 ; Maenads, 
199 ; Nereids, 186, 207 ; putti, 
230; Orpheus, 198, 211; triton, 
192, 216. 

(c) Symbolic Myths : Admetus and 
Alcestis, 257 ; Hector, ransoming 
of, 208 ; Heracles, apotheosis of, 
207, 226 ; Labours of, 201 ; Hylas, 
rape of, 224 ; Perseus and An- 
dromeda, 224 ; Perseus with head 
of Gorgon, 144 ; Pluto and Proser- 
pina, 199 ; Orpheus and Eurydice, 
198 ; Rhea Silvia and Mars, 202, 
224 ; Thetis and Achilles, 225. 

(,d) Symbolic Scenes: banquet, 126, 
146; baptism, 225; chariot racing, 
126 ; hunting, 126 ; Judgment 
scenes, 207 ; revelling, 126 ; vtr 
sacrum, 210. 
SERAJEVO, Mithraic altar-piece, 189. 



292 



APOTHEOSIS AND AFTER LIFE 



She'ol, the Hebrew, 162. 

Sky scrapers, 27. 

Sol. See Sun. 

Santa Sophia, Constantinople, 10, 
109. 

Soul, Ransom of, 208. 

SpALATO, Mausoleum of Diocletian 
at, 186. 

Statues : Augustus from Prima Porta, 
173 ; Augustus from Via Labicana, 
22 ; Beau Dieu of Rheims, 51 ; 
Demeter of Cnidos, 51 ; Genius of 
Augustus, 70 ; Hermes of Olym- 
pia, 51 ; Zeus of Olympia, 51. 

Stelae : Alexandrian, 158 ; Asia 
Minor, 143 ; Attic, 131-142 ; Boe- 
otian, 159; Macedonian, 159; 
Mycenaean, 135 ; Peloponnesian, 
129-131 ; Roman, 191-201, 214- 
222; Thessalian, 159; of Archip- 
pos, 158; of Blussus, 217; from 
Chios, 153 ; of Demetria and 
Pamphile, 136; of Eutamia, 135; of 
Herennia Syrisca, 160 ; of Lyseas, 
134; of Metrodoros, 154; of 
Nertus, 215 ; from Orchomenos, 

159- 

Strzygowski, Josef, quoted, 4. 

Stuccoes of Roman tombs, 205-213. 

Sun, capitulation of, to emperor, 91 ; 
chariot of, 64; guides imperial 
chariot, 91 ; encounter with 
Mithras, 189 ; on column of 
Mayence, 81 ; on Igel monument, 
229. 

Tamuli (Sardinia), 122. 

TARENTUM, 161. 

TELAMON, pediments of, at Florence, 
78. 

Tellus. See Terra Mater. 

Temples : of Ancyra, 71 ; archaic, on 
Acropolis of Athens, 42 ; round, 
12; of Selinos, 40; of Sibyl at 
Tivoli, 12. See also under 
Rome. 

Terra Mater on the Gemma Augiistea, 



72 ; on silver dish in Vienna, 

82 ; on disc in Madrid, 105 ; on 

column of Mayence, 81. 
THASOS, relief from, at Constan- 
tinople, 157. 
Theodosius : with his sons on silver 

disc at Madrid, 105 ; basis of, at 

Constantinople, 104. 
Thermae. See Baths. 
Thessaly, cult of dead in, 159. 
Tiberius, enthroned, on Grand Camee, 

68, 71. 
Tintoretto, ill, 281, 
Titus, arch of, 83, 
Toga picta, 64. 
Tomb, at S. Remy, 223 ; of Tantalus, 

195 ; of Trajan (see column of 

Trajan). 
Tombs : from Acropolis of Xanthos, 

151 ; of the Nereids, 153. See 

also under Rome. 
Tombstones or gravestones. See Stelae. 
Topham collection of drawings, 212. 
Torch-bearers, Mithraic, 188. 
Trajan, 7, 13, 23 ; column of, 23, 8$, 

lis. 
Treves (Trier), Museum: tombs: 

of Albinius Asper and Restituta, 

200; adorned with boats, 2x6; 

reliefs from tombs : lady's toilet, 

219; 'Rent-dayScene,' 219; family 

repast, 220. 
Triumphator, 64, 65, 69, 168. 
Turin, steleof Mussius, 215. 
Tyrtaeus, quoted, 124. 

UKHAIDIR, palace of, 8. 

Valentinian I. and Valens, 103. 
VEII, Tomba Campana at, 166. 

Venice : 

San Marco : Ascension of Alex- 
ander, 107; 'Tetrarchy,' 28, 

94- 
Palazzo Ducale : Assumption of 
Tintoretto, iii. 
Vergil, 20, 73, 74, 76, 198. 



INDEX 



293 



Verona, testament of Epikteta, 158; 
Christian sarcophagus, 100. 

Verres, 64. 

Vienna : cameo with Augustus and 
Roma {Gemma Augustea), 71 ; 
medallion with Valentinian and 
Valens, 103 ; relief from Ephesus, 
90 ; silver dish from Aquileia, 
82, 106 ; stele from Klausenburg, 
195- 

WALBERSDORF, stele of Tiberius 

Julius, 191. 
Warde- Fowler, W., quoted, 79, 86. 



Washington (U.S.A.), Hall of 

all the Americas, 27. 
Wax images, 163. 
Wickhoff, 83. 
Wiesbaden, Mithraic altar-piece, 

189. 

XANTHOS, Nereid monument, 153 ; 

tomb from Acropolis of, 1 5 1 ; Harpy 

tomb from, 148. 
Xenophanes, 155. 

Zeus, monotheism latent in, 51. 
Zodiac, 188, 284. 



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